Deflector Shields Becoming Real

In Star Trek they’re always using deflector shields to protect themselves from hostile Klingon fire, but it seems that scientists may start to add deflector shields to protect astronauts from dangerous radiation in outer space:

‘Deflector’ shields could protect future astronauts

“Magnetic “deflector shields” could one day guard astronauts against dangerous space radiation, if experiments now underway pay off. Exposure to energetic charged particles could put astronauts on lengthy missions at increased risk of cancer and even cognitive problems (see Future mars astronauts have radiation on their minds). The particles come from the solar wind and also from supernovae and still-unidentified sources outside the solar system.

The Earth’s magnetic field protects spacecraft in low-Earth orbits, such as the space shuttle and International Space Station, from such particles. But astronauts journeying to Mars or living on the Moon would benefit from no such protection. Now, US and European plans for long-term missions to the Moon and Mars have sparked renewed interest in the problem of radiation shielding.

One group at the University of Washington in Seattle, US, has just completed a round of experiments investigating one possible approach, using a bubble of charged particles, or plasma, as a deflector shield. Now, a second team has begun deflector shield experiments of their own. The team, led by Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, hopes to eventually fly a test satellite surrounded by a cloud of plasma in space.”