Michelle Meyers, Calvin Okulicz, Patricia Thomas, Catherine M. Davis, Anthony G. Lau
The College of New Jersey, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Department of Biomedical

Engineering, Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Therapeutics

Introduction

One of the many missions of NASA is to develop a safer agent of space travel for astronauts. According to NASA, the average astronaut will be exposed to anywhere between 50 and 2,000 mGy of effective radiation. In a more relative manner, this is about 150 to 6,000 chest x-rays. Space radiation is known to induce DNA damage that can lead to a number of health defects. Galactic Cosmic Radiation (GCR) is a primary type of radiation seen during space travel that comes from the milky way. Radiation exposure has a direct relationship with how far away astronauts are from the Earth [1], so as space travel becomes more intense so does radiation exposure for astronauts. The objective of this study is to use micro-indentation to observe the material properties of Long Evans Rats bone that have been treated with GCR with respect to dosage, sex, and indentation location.