Innovative Israeli Radiation Vest En Route to the Moon

By Hamodia Staff

YERUSHALAYIM – Ahead of the Artemis I launch, NASA installed Zohar and Helga, the two identical manikins for testing a new radiation protection vest, a product of Israeli technology. 

Preparations for an international experiment – a collaboration between the Israel Space Agency (ISA), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and NASA have been accomplished and the experiment is ready for the planned launch at the end of August. The project, called the Matroshka AstroRad Radiation Experiment (MARE) will investigate radiation exposure throughout the flight and test the effectiveness of the new protection vest developed by Israeli StemRad, supported by Israel Space Agency within the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology of Israel.

MARE addresses one of the greatest health hazards for crews on space missions beyond low-Earth orbit – space radiation. Until today, all manned missions to explore space, besides Apollo’s missions to the moon, were limited to low-Earth orbits where most of the harmful radiation, including those due to solar storms and cosmic galactic radiation, is shielded by the Earth’s magnetic field.

In lieu of a human crew, Artemis I’s Orion spacecraft will be carrying two identical manikin torsos, dubbed Helga and Zohar, and manufactured from materials that mimic human bone and soft tissues.

The manikins are equipped with radiation detectors, which will enable scientists to map internal radiation doses to bodily areas containing critical organs. Identical in every other way, they will inform scientists on how well the new vest may protect crew from radiation, while also collecting data on how much radiation astronauts might experience inside Orion on a lunar mission – conditions that cannot be recreated on Earth.