Journal of Airline Operations and Aviation Management

Going outside of the earth’s atmosphere for a long time subjects some cells to highly complex types of radiation of high-energy protons, alpha particles, and other charged particles, and is thought to impose serious and long lasting genomic and metabolic damage. This research combines experimental data and computerized models to trace radiation damages to cells, rest, and other health effects that could emerge from a hypothetical deep space mission. Using a space radiation simulation chamber and multi-scale modeling framework, the research examines the probabilities of formations of DNA damage, oxidative stress, mitochondrion dysfunction, and chromosomal disorder at different dosages and levels of linear energy transfer (LET). Kinetic models of base excision repair (BER) and non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) have shown that time-evolving the efficiency of repair loses its efficacy beyond certain LET thresholds, and this is standardized within the framework of Monte Carlo models of lesion repair that is never completed. It was found that prolonged exposure to chromatin highly compacted and oxidized, and volumes of bioenergetics collapsed, and were crossed by high grids of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and were shown to have a greater composition over a period of six months, resulting in lower population senescence indices. The coupled stochastic survival framework integrated in this research connects the molecular scale repair failures with the exposure health risk measures and opens up new risk assessment methods for space travelers. These results highlight the need to integrate models of biological radiation damage with adequate shielding design and real-time monitoring of shielded biomolecules and long-range space radiation in upcoming long-duration space flights.