Apollo 18 


The dose was high enough that astronauts exposed on the surface of the moon were severely incapacitated and unable to successfully return to the command module, which then was forced to return home without them. 

In his 1982 book, "Space", in a chapter called "Dark Side of the Moon", Robert Michener told the cautionary tale of a fictitious Apollo 18 mission to the Moon. This mission occurred at a time of high solar activity resulting in a huge flux of radiation in the vicinity of Earth and its Moon. The dose was high enough that astronauts exposed on the surface of the moon were severely incapacitated and unable to successfully return to the command module, which then was forced to return home without them. This figure is from inside the back cover of Space and shows the history of Apollo 18.



How realistic is this tale? Does the sun really emit such high doses of radiation? Here's a plot of solar activity as both sunspot number and energetic particle dose, from the Apollo era. So the answer appears to be yes, the Sun is in fact capable of killing exposed astronauts. The dose recorded for the (very large) solar flare of 4 Aug 1972 was sufficiently high to produce the effects described by Michener in his book.
 

Posted: Sun - November 21, 2004 at 08:35 p.m.         | |

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