There’s an interesting article in The Guardian today about how travellers to Mars could be protected against the solar wind that would otherwise smash into their DNA with nasty consequences. This article follows up on a whole series from other sources last year, and details a neat step towards creating a shield for space travellers.

Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in England found that a magnet placed into a beam of high-energy particles designed to mimic solar wind deflected the wind around it. This isn’t necessarily hugely surprising but it does mean that the research team can claim their method is a viable way of shielding spaceships going to Mars from the solar wind.

“We now have actual measurements that show a ‘hole’ in the solar wind could be created in which a spacecraft could sit, affording some protection from ‘ion storms’, as they would call them on Star Trek,” Bamford says in the Guardian.

This work first got wide publicity last year, when New Scientist ran a piece on it although at that time it was up in the air whether it would work. In that article Frank Cucinotta, NASA’s chief radiation health officer, also said this approach could have drawbacks compared to simply adding layers of material to block particles. Chief amongst these if that if the system breaks you have no shield at all.

Bamford’s work also appeared on a number of blog posts, and if you can get the Rutherford lab’s latest podcast to work you can listen to her on there too.

Image: artist’s concept of future crew exploration vehicle / NASA/John Frassanito and Associates