This afternoon – between 3:30 and 5:30 – the Israeli doll “Zohar” is expected to take off into the lunar orbit aboard NASA’s “Artemis” spacecraft. The long-term purpose of Artemis is to return humans to the moon, establish a human colony on it and turn it into a transit station for manned missions to deep space, and to Mars in particular. In many ways it is the realization of the dream of Buzz Aldrin, the Apollo 13 crew member who landed on the moon 53 years ago. Aldrin has preached in recent years for a spacecraft breakthrough to Mars via the moon as a way station. According to the thesis that has become accepted by NASA in the last decade, landing on the moon for refueling and refreshing resources is essential for the manned mission to Mars.
The uniqueness of the Zohar doll – the Israeli part of the space mission – in the radiation protection vest in which it will be wrapped for a scientific experiment. The vest, developed by StemRad, has accumulated the longest space mileage for the time being among the vests competing in the Artemis missions, and if it proves its capabilities in filtering cosmic radiation, it has quite a bit of potential to become the official vest of NASA’s manned missions in space. Its uniqueness is not only in the radiation filtering, but also in the comfort and the ergonomic structure it offers in relation to the existing vest in the space agency. The vest was specially tailored to the dimensions of the Zohar doll, and not by chance: NASA plans to land the first female astronaut on the moon in 2025, and to rewrite the historic statement from the Apollo flight “For all mankind” with connotations that do not include women.
The Israeli vest has the potential to revolutionize flights to Mars as well. Besides the very low temperature (-65 degrees Celsius), staying on the red planet is dangerous for a long time because of the cosmic radiation coming from the sun, which can over time weaken the human body and cause malignant diseases. The radiation on Earth is infinitely lower than that measured on the surface of the other planets in the solar system due to the protection provided by the atmosphere and the magnetic field.
The vest is now designed to stay on the moon, where the measured radiation level is 200 times greater than on Earth, but it is also able to withstand the radiation on Mars, which is infinitely higher than that on the moon, due to the fact that the planet is closer to the sun.