Articles for "MARE"

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Space | 11. May 2022 | posted by Thomas Berger

MARE to the Moon – our M-42 radiation meter with a smart solution for saving power

DLR-Strahlungsmessgerät M-42
Credit: DLR (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
A flight model of the DLR M-42 radiation meter with the two batteries plugged in and the battery holder

The MARE experiment includes a set of 16 radiation measurement devices called M-42, which the Biophysics Working Group of the Radiation Biology Department at the DLR Institute of Aerospace Medicine developed, tested and now finally built for the NASA Artemis I mission. M-42 is an active radiation meter. This means that it needs to obtain power from somewhere for the radiation detector (a small silicon diode) and the associated measurement electronics, and for storing the resulting measurement data. This power can be supplied either directly via a USB cable or batteries that simply plug into the M-42 via two connectors.

In principle, this sounds very simple. However, anyone who has ever hoped that their mobile phone would last until the next charging opportunity knows how dependent we are on batteries and their capacity. This poses a big challenge for this mission in particular. Our M-42 measuring instruments and the mannequins Helga and Zohar are part of NASA's Artemis I mission, but we do not get data or power interfaces to the Orion spacecraft. read more

Space | 27. April 2022 | posted by Thomas Berger

Project MARE – to the Moon and back with Orion

NASA-Raumschiff ORION
Credit: NASA
The uncrewed NASA mission Artemis I is set to fly to the Moon and back to Earth in 42 days with the Orion spacecraft

In summer 2022, the time will finally have come – our Matroshka AstroRad Radiation Experiment (MARE) will fly to the Moon and back with NASA’s Artemis I mission. We have been working towards this moment for several years and have had to live with the fact that space projects are frequently delayed. We have also had to contend with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. This presented us with new, major challenges when putting together the experiment.

MARE aims to measure radiation exposure during the lunar flight of the Orion capsule using two ‘non-human’ passengers, Helga and Zohar. These two female mannequins – measuring 95 centimetres tall – contain slices of plastic elements of different densities (38 to be precise). These simulate the bones and organs of the body, such as the lungs, stomach, uterus and bone marrow. Zohar will fly on the Orion Moon flight wearing an AstroRad protective vest; Helga will fly without protection. In this way, these two identical models will collect comparable data sets to enable the evaluation and improvement of the effectiveness of the protective vest. read more