When it comes to planning manned missions to Mars, we’ve been so preoccupied with how to ferry humans 225 million km through the Solar System, that we might be missing a really serious problem — are we sending astronauts to the Red Planet to have their brains fried?
A new study based on mice has found that the amount of cosmic rays expected to bombard astronauts during this extended trip could lead to severe cognitive side effects that will stick around long after they’ve returned to Earth, including memory loss, anxiety, and chronic dementia.