Dr Katherine Bennell-Pegg

So going back to the moon is a lot worse of a radiation environment.

It's one of the huge challenges we'll have to deal with when humans one day go out to Mars.

Ways to deal with it are to have things perhaps like water shielding.

So you store your water in the lining of the vehicles, but it's pretty heavy.

If you're on the surface, about one metre thickness of Martian regolith I know can block almost all the radiation.

The astronauts there will be piling rocks on top of their habitat or living in lava tubes is another concept.

But what we learn about those environments teaches us about, you know, how to deal with radioactive environments on Earth, like power plants and things like that, and how to better understand the effects of that on the body.

We cannot replicate the radiation environment in space here on Earth at all.

Yeah, it's really about that contribution.

There's no financial reward for being an astronaut.

You know, you get paid similarly to being in the military or being an engineer or a scientist.

But it's really about that's,

the best way we feel we can contribute to this discovery and of course it's a wonderful journey and adventure just like a lot of things that are hard work are um but yeah there are risks the risks aren't always known right there's known risks it's probabilistic if you have radiation it doesn't mean you'll always get cancer it's a higher risk of cancer if one ray hits the wrong cell something might happen um

Yeah, and there's still so much we're learning.

Even if your mission goes right, you have those outcomes.

If you look at the Apollo astronauts, most of them lived long and healthy lives, but a lot more of them suffered from problems with their heart.

Which is also associated with space flight than from radiation effects.

So it's going to be different when humans are back out on the moon for longer periods of time, more than days to a week, but for months.

we're going to see different impacts and that will hopefully help with medicine on Earth.

Yeah, the two go hand in hand, actually.