All organisms sent into space may experience harmful effects from the various types of radiation present in space environments. Understanding these effects will be accomplished not only by conducting investigations specifically designed to study radiation, but by analyzing data from all experiments conducted in space using contemporaneous radiation dosimetry measurements.
GeneLab has launched an initiative to include much more information on these effects into the GeneLab Data Repository. This effort includes import of more ground studies of radiation effects on organisms, as well as "environmental" radiation measurements taken onboard STS (Space Shuttle) flights, and on the ISS where various biological experiments were conducted.
Recently, the project has imported 15 additional ground studies, and linked all environmental radiation dosimetry measurements from STS flights to existing GeneLab data sets. In total, the GeneLab Data Repository now has 29 ground studies of radiation biological effects (largely on humans and rodents) that employ a variety of radiation doses and qualities. In addition, the repository now houses radiation dose and dose rate data linked to 18 studies that flew on 8 different flights of the STS (see example below). In the upcoming weeks, GeneLab will collect and add environmental radiation data for biological experiments conducted on the ISS and on the BION-M1 satellite.
Ground Radiation Datasets:
https://genelab-data.ndc.nasa.gov/genelab/search_studies
Environmental Radiation Data:
https://genelab-data.ndc.nasa.gov/genelab/environmental/radiation
Example of the type of radiation metadata fields added to each STS experiment.
