Cosmic rays are, or rather were, the reason why manufactures avoid shipping high end cameras by plane, cosmic rays kill pixels in imaging sensors: https://youtu.be/98FZ8C6HneE?t=479
It's also the reason why all ISS footage has dead pixels on it.
It's also the reason why all ISS footage has dead pixels on it.
This is somewhat similar – although on a much different scale – to when Anatoli Bugorski[2] had an accident in 1978 involving a beam of protons traveling at over 99% the speed of light going through his head. He also described it as a flash "brighter than a thousand suns".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena
I guess I'm just noticing his name more?
https://www.nytimes.com/1971/03/04/archives/space-lights-tra...
Still one of the most audacious things I've seen, but he was a good physicist and did the math right, so he wasn't being unsafe.
This can involve things such as using digital circuits that are radiation resistant (e.g. look up radiation resistant flip flop). Using multiple computers running the same thing that all "vote" for the correct result, so if one computer has an error from radiation you don't suffer. Using semiconductors that are more resistant to radiation (larger band gaps mean more energy required to flip a bit).
Physical shielding is key as well. The infrared imager on the Cassini probe had a case made out of tantalum, as tantalum is a very dense material which prevents a lot of radiation from going through it.
So this allows removal of effects that do not correlate with what is physically should be in the image, but is an artifact of the sensor, image system, etc:
-- sensor artifacts: dead pixels, flat field irregularity, pixel response variations, electronic noise
-- imaging system issues: optical problems, lens/mirror defects
-- and then exactly what's being discussed here: cosmic rays, transient objects (satellite tracks!)
Modern camera firmware detects stuck and dead pixels and tries to fill them in with neighbor data., but when there's too many... there's not enough data to fill in.
Keep watching top left part of the video. Most visible at 0:30.
Cosmic rays are just very potent photons, capable of knocking out electrons from an atom (meaning they are ionizing) causing havoc in precision electronics and, well, our DNA.
In my opinion it's a bit silly argument, as there's a whole bunch of other risks and quality of life sacrifices made by the persons who are going to undertake that journey. Some raised chance of cancer is probably the least of their worries.
"NASA told Business Insider it estimates there’s a 1-in-276 chance the flight could be fatal and a 1-in-60 chance that some problem would cause the mission to fail (but not kill the crew)"
That's fairly low - feels like the age of sail would be far higher -- Columbus's second voyage alone had about 25 deaths just from scurvy. His first voyage was only about 90 crew.
But remember that life wasn't exactly easy on land either.
The model commonly used in radiation protection to assess cancer risk with respect to radiation dose is called the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model [1]. The model critically assumes that (1) total radiation dose is the only predictor of cancer risk, and (2) any radiation exposure results in an increased cancer risk.
This model works at high absorbed doses, however, its applicability is highly controversial when used with low abosorbed doses or with relatively high absorbed doses that occur over a long period of time (ie: low dose rate).
The thing is, the human body has built-in defense mechanisms against cancer such as DNA repair. There is a good body of evidence that small doses and low-rate exposures do not result in cancer risk (ie: there is a threshold absorbed dose and probably also a threshold dose rate), but the model does not account for this.
This is particularly problematic when trying to assess excess mortality from things such as radiological accidents: when you multiply the small LNT-predicted risk for a low dose times a very large population, you end up with a lot of cancers. This is one of the reasons you'll see estimates for deaths from the Chernobyl accident vary by orders of magnitude.
It's also problematic when assessing something like a Mars mission: yes, the astronauts would get large cumulative doses, but the dose rate is pretty low over most of the mission (other than during high dose rate solar events where they would need radiation shielding). How much of an elevated cancer risk is it actually? Nobody is quite sure.
Edit: Correction, there is very little difference and fewer cosmic rays during the day. Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0105005.pdf