On November 16, 2022, NASA successfully launched the Artemis I Mission. This historic uncrewed mission, the first of a series of NASA missions aimed at enabling human exploration to the Moon and Mars, served as the first integrated test of NASA’s deep space exploration systems, including the Orion spacecraft. Two custom anthropomorphic ATOM® Phantoms from Sun Nuclear rode as “passengers” aboard the Orion to assist in measuring potential radiation exposure to astronauts.
Following a company tradition when shipping ATOM Phantoms to customers worldwide, the space-bound phantoms were given names — Helga and Zohar.
ATOM Phantoms are designed and produced by a division of Sun Nuclear, a Mirion Medical company. The phantoms — constructed of materials that mimic human tissue, bone, and organs — are used globally by hospitals, cancer centers and research institutions to provide a physical representation of patient anatomy for measuring radiation dose in cancer treatment and imaging procedures.
The full ATOM Phantom line consists of models representing a newborn, 1-year-old, 5-year-old, 10-year-old, adult male, and adult female.
Helga and Zohar, female-bodied torso models, were selected and customized to serve as what nasa.gov refers to as “purposeful passengers” on board the Orion spacecraft. Their purpose was to collect data that will help inform safety methods for future missions with astronauts. A stated goal of the Artemis program is to send the first woman astronaut to walk on the surface of the Moon, and women typically experience greater sensitivity to space radiation.
Both phantoms were equipped with radiation detectors, but only Zohar wore a radiation protection vest to better understand the radiation levels that may be encountered in space and how effective the vest is for mitigating solar particle events (SPE) exposure.
Aboard the uncrewed lunar mission, Helga and Zohar journeyed for 25 days, 10 hours, and 53 minutes, traveling 1.4 million miles before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on December 11, 2022 with valuable data that will help pave the way for future space missions.
While Sun Nuclear produced the ATOM Phantoms, the effort to prepare Helga and Zohar for the mission was an international effort. The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) is conducting the Matroshka AstroRad Radiation Experiment (MARE) in collaboration with the Israel Space Agency (ISA) and industry partner StemRad, as well as Lockheed Martin and NASA. In addition, universities and research institutions from nine countries have participated in the experiment.
“Mirion Technologies has a long history of our products being used in space, from dosimeters in the International Space Station to various spectroscopy instruments in exploration robots and satellites,” says Thomas Logan, CEO of Mirion Technologies. “With the historic Artemis I mission and its inclusion of ATOM Phantoms, Sun Nuclear continues the longstanding engagement of Mirion to make space exploration safer, and to support interplanetary scientific voyages.”
Learn more about Mirion’s contributions to Space Exploration.
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