New space ship force field to make make Mars trip possible?

PhysOrg writes researchers believe they've found a way to deal with the deadly radiation that astronauts would face during an expedition to Mars. It involves a small portable magnetosphere that will shield the spacecraft from the highly charged, ionised particles of solar winds. This has long been a dream but new experiments indicate it may be feasible:

Space craft visiting the Moon or Mars could maintain some of this protection by taking along their very own portable "mini"-magnetosphere. The idea has been around since the 1960's but it was thought impractical because it was believed that only a very large (more than 100km wide) magnetic bubble could possibly work.

Researchers at the Science and Technology Facilities Council's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, the Universities of York, Strathclyde and IST Lisbon, have undertaken experiments, using know-how from 50 years of research into nuclear fusion, to show that it is possible for astronauts to shield their spacecrafts with a portable magnetosphere - scattering the highly charged, ionised particles of the solar wind and flares away from their space craft.

Computer simulations done by a team in Lisbon with scientists at Rutherford Appleton last year showed that theoretically a very much smaller "magnetic bubble" of only several hundred meters across would be enough to protect a spacecraft.

Now this has been confirmed in the laboratory in the UK using apparatus originally built to work on fusion. By recreating in miniature a tiny piece of the Solar Wind, scientists working in the laboratory were able to confirm that a small "hole" in the Solar Wind is all that would be needed to keep the astronauts safe on their journey to our nearest neighbours.

Dr. Ruth Bamford, one of the lead researchers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, said, "These initial experiments have shown promise and that it may be possible to shield astronauts from deadly space weather".

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