Oct 14 2003
From The Space Library
NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) commissioned the US$34 million NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) at the DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, where NASA biologists and physicists would perform thousands of experiments to measure the hazards of space radiation and to develop countermeasures to protect astronauts. Construction of the facility had begun in 1998. NASA and the DOE had cooperated in building the NSRL, which housed an accelerator producing beams of protons or heavy ions, like those that the Sun and other cosmic sources typically produce. The beams moved through a 328-foot (100-meter) transport tunnel to a 400-square-foot (37-square-meter) target hall, to hit a target composed either of a biological sample or of shielding material. Scientists planned to measure the interaction of specific particles with targets to determine the effectiveness of various materials in shielding against radiation and to develop and to test new materials. An NSRL health team would perform tests with biological samples to learn how radiation damages cells, how to predict risks, and to develop countermeasures to mitigate radiation effects. (NASA, “New NASA Facility Will Help Protect Space Crews from Radiation,” news release 03-326, 14 October 2003, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2003/oct/HQ_03326_new_facility.html (accessed 27 January 2009).
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