Getting ready to reach Mars involves getting ready to tackle the huge amounts of radiation waiting for us there. What Radiation Assessment Detectors or RADs do is simple. They help to measure the level of radiation present in the environment. This allows the scientists and researchers to develop protection for human beings from these levels of radiation.

Cary Zeitlin is a researcher in San Antonio’s Southwest Research Institute and says that understanding the radiation environment inside a spacecraft carrying humans to Mars or other deep space destinations is critical for planning future crewed missions. This is what the Mars Science laboratory’s RADs are constantly monitoring for NASA.

NASA hopes that they will be able to land man on either an asteroid or Mars within our lifetime. This will involve working on puzzles that get thrown up by the challenges in outer space so that astronauts can safely move in space, explore a close by celestial body and then return to planet Earth.

A lot of help in this research has come from studying the conditions faced by the scientific community currently occupying the International Space Station. This data on the human being’s body to adapt to its environment in space living conditions is an essential part on science projects that try to solve the challenges that will be faced by future astronauts.