Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Image credit: Lockheed Martin

Once the Artemis II crew is beyond the defensive environments of Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field, they are subject to space radiation.

While en route to and from the moon, the Artemis II crew will be vigil, eyeing radiation monitoring detectors, listening for caution and warning alarms, and they would be outfitted with active dosimeters – a device for measuring and checking exposure to doses of radiation, such as X-rays or gamma rays.

Hot spot

The Artemis crew riding in their Orion spacecraft is relatively highly shielded. However, dealing with a worrisome solar event, Artemis flight rules would have the astronauts establish a shelter utilizing central stowage bays emptied of contents.

Tucked inside their Orion spacecraft, the Artemis II crew is seen in a pre-launch rehearsal.
Image credit: NASA/Mark Sowa

Doing so would create a lower dose region within capsule confines. Stowage from the central bays would be moved to a known “hot spot” within Orion, to help reduce the dose rate exposure of the four-person crew. “

“If an event is particularly bad,” explains one expert, “there are some places in the capsule, such as storage bays and down by the toilet, that the crew can go to.”

An inside artistic look at the four-seater Orion spacecraft, measuring roughly 16.5 feet (5 meters) in diameter and standing 10.8 feet (3.3 meters) tall that can be converted into a storm shelter.
Image credit: NASA’s Space Radiation & Analyses Group (SRAG)

For more details, go to my new Space.com story – “What will happen if Artemis 2 astronauts get hit by a solar storm during NASA’s ambitious moon mission?” – at:

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/how-the-artemis-2-astronauts-could-weather-a-solar-storm-during-their-moon-mission