Israeli protective vest to be tested on Orion spacecraft

The AstroRad radiation protection vest designed by Tel Aviv-based StemRad will be worn by a mannequin on NASA’s test flight of its unmanned Orion spacecraft, according to an agreement signed by NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot and Israel Space Agency Director Avi Blasberger during the 34th Space Symposium in Colorado last month. Sometime next year, Orion will launch on the most powerful rocket in the world and fly farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever flown. It will travel 280,000 miles from Earth, thousands of miles beyond the moon over the course of about a three-week mission, and return home faster and hotter than ever before.

The AstroRad vest was developed to protect the bone marrow and organs that are particularly sensitive to radiation exposure, such as lungs, breasts, stomach, colon and ovaries. As women are particularly vulnerable to space radiation, the test model is geared to female astronauts. In addition, the Israel Space Agency (ISA) is expected to sign an agreement with Lockheed Martin Space Systems to test the vest on the International Space Station (ISS) at the beginning of 2019. The astronauts on ISS will wear the vest during their daily routine to evaluate it ergonomically. “This evaluation together with radiation protection data obtained from the AstroRad experiment on Orion Exploration Mission-1 will provide NASA with all the necessary information for assessing the AstroRad as essential personal protective equipment for future manned deep space missions such as Orion EM-2 and any future missions to Mars,” says Israel’s Science and Technology Ministry. -- More...