We've flown a radiation-blocking vest to the Moon and back, and it worked

Key Points:

• StemRad, an Israeli-American startup, developed AstroRad, a wearable radiation-shielding vest designed to protect astronauts from solar storm radiation by targeting sensitive body tissues rather than shielding the entire spacecraft.
• The vest was tested on NASA’s uncrewed Artemis I mission using tissue-equivalent phantoms equipped with dosimeters and demonstrated about 60% reduction in effective radiation dose during simulated typical solar storms, comparable to Orion’s onboard storm shelter.
• The vest’s design uses hexagonal rods of high-density polyethylene to balance flexibility and protection, focusing shielding on critical areas like bone marrow and reproductive organs, while allowing astronauts to move freely during solar events.
• Although effective against solar proton events, the vest offers minimal protection against continuous, high-energy galactic cosmic rays and currently weighs 26 kilograms, prompting efforts to reduce its weight to improve usability during extended missions.
• Real-world validation of the vest’s performance against actual solar storms in deep space remains challenging, so current assessments rely heavily on computer simulations and proxy radiation exposure data from Earth’s Van Allen belts.