**4.3 Human protection and primary survival needs in space and on the moon**


The main human protection requirement in space and on the surface of the Moon (which has technically no atmosphere and no magnetic field) is radiation

#### **Figure 7.**

*Health concerns in space (from the [29]) Health concerns Legend, Red (Unacceptable): A risk with one or more of its attributes (i.e. consequence, likelihood, uncertainty) currently exceeding established human health and performance standards for that mission scenario. Yellow (Acceptable): A risk with all of its attributes (i.e. consequence, likelihood, uncertainty) well understood and characterized, such that they meet existing standards but are not fully controlled, resulting in 'acceptance' of a higher risk posture. Lowering the risk posture is important, but the risk is not expected to preclude a mission. Green (Controlled): A risk with all of its attributes (i.e. consequence, likelihood, uncertainty) well understood and characterized, with an accepted mitigation strategy in place to control the risk. It is still helpful to pursue optimized mitigation opportunities such as compact and reliable exercise devices.*

*Access to Space, Access to the Moon – Two Sides of the Same Coin? DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105175*

**Figure 8.** *Glover installing MVP Cell-06 in the ISS (courtesy: NASA spaceflight Center).*

protection. In this matter, another set of experiments on Cygnus transport aims directly at the Moon. The Artemis HERA on Space Station (A-HoSS) modifies the Hybrid Electronic Radiation Assessor (HERA), built to operate as the primary radiation detection system for Orion and certified for flight on Artemis 2, to operate on the space station. The investigation provides an opportunity to evaluate this hardware in the space radiation environment prior to the Artemis 2 flight [30].

Radiation is both a human and a technological constraint. Indeed, shielding for radiation takes weight and redundancy for technology. Humans on the other hand, are subject to certain radiation related diseases, and shielding them, as well as making them more resistant to regular radiation doses, is still the centre of many designs, experiments and research works. On the Moon, a most ubiquitous radiation protection is the use of regolith above settlements' habitats. This would serve a combined purpose of mechincal kinetic absorption for micro-meteorids and radiation shielding.

The main human survival need *is* oxygen (counted in 1–3 minutes roughly), then it *is* water (counted in 2–5 days roughly). Recycling water is altogether a strategic endeavor in many ways, as water redundancy is very costly in weight to space, and recycling it increases safety and resilience of space explorers and dwellers. As shown by the Martian rover Perseverance soon after its arrival, ISRU, in this case the CO2 transformed in O2, is the most economic and reliable way to have access to non-limited resources once on a given planetoid surface. While O2 can be easily compressed for transport, and uncompressed into a globally controlled environment system in some inhabitations on another planetoid, it is not the same for H2O, as it is incompressible, and vastly more dense than O2. Finally, H2O can be split in H2 and O2, providing respectively energy and life support if needed.

#### **4.4 Why a lunar station at the south pole: Aitken basin?**

On the Moon surface, a practical ISRU is water extraction, which can only be found in the vicinity of the poles, where some craters bottom are always under shadow, keeping frozen ice from sublimating [31]. This is where (the South Pole – Aitken basin) the joint Sino-Russian International Lunar Research Station was to be built in the coming years (to be redefined the after May 2022 hold of PRC from Russian space ventures; NASA [7]), for the obvious reason of water ISRU (**Figure 9**). Nevertheless, water recycling technology will always be a must on the surface of the Moon, first of all, for

**Figure 9.** *Chandrayaan-1 M3 lunar surface water. South & North poles [31].*

emergency reasons, but also for the settlement missions when ISRU water mining/ extraction tools will be on inititialization/maintenance phases and return only partial yield.

## **4.5 Food security, ISRU and fluxes circular sustainability**

Already 60+ years ago, Trudeau [2] mentioned that settlements in man-made tubes underground the Moon regolith would provide mechanical protection from meteoroids gardening and cosmic radiation. He also added that '*Early attention will be given to hydroponic culture of salads and the development of closed cycle food production systems*'. In 2021, NASA and CSA launched the Deep Space Food Challenge [32], to increase innovation in the field of nutrition and make the food tasty to '*encourage people to continue eating during long space voyages*', recognizing the psychological impact of appearance, something understood by earth livestock supplement producers early on. Additionally, the challenge aims at finding new food production technologies (or systems), which would have little waste produced or resources required.

'*ExoAgriculture*', a term coming from the exogenically designed and applied agriculture, as opposed to the Earth-based endogenic agriculture, is a new field of science in itself (also referred to as *ExoAg*), and is being developed now constantly in the micro-gravity of the ISS, alongside being experimented on various Martian soil analogs in various research laboratories on Earth [33]. As for the Moon, in the absence of atmosphere to deflect/absorb both cosmic radiation and some of the meteoroids, the actual constant and thorough gardening of the regolith has led to the reduction of its differentiation and down-homogeneization of the mineralogical properties. The result being powder/dust with less to no macro-structure or molecular properties, radiation further sterilized its macro-properties by breaking molecular loose crystalline structures. Even if some Moon rocks maybe mechanically crushed into structurally interesting macro structured soil interesting to plants root development, it will most probably still require additional minerals, Earth microbes and fertilizers to grow on it, returning to an initial perspective from 1959 mentioned above which might be more practical.

Besides the most prominent human survivability performance improvements by the benefits of adding vitamins, minerals to the diet, as well as recycling CO2 into O2 as a redundancy of mechanical/chemical scrubbers, the actual proximity to and care of plants may also affect positively the long-term conditions of life of humans in adverse environments, though a reviews calls for more experiments on this [34]. Yet, the probability of adding a plant or a frame with a natural environment in a

windowless office has been found five times more attractive than not adding any in a more recent study from Bringslimark et al. [35].
