Would you travel to Mars when the Sun is most dangerous? ☀️ It sounds backwards, but here’s the twist: When the Sun is most active, solar storms can be dangerous — but astronauts can shield against them. What’s harder to escape are galactic cosmic rays from deep space. And during solar maximum, the Sun actually sweeps many of those away. Data from our ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter suggest astronauts travelling during solar maximum could cut their radiation exposure by about half compared to a journey during solar minimum. 📹 europeanspaceagency 🎞️ ESA, creativecommons BY-SA 3.0 IGO; ESA/NASA; ESA/NASA/Proba-2/Proba-3/SOHO/SWAP/ASPIICS/LASCO C2; ESA; ESA, Acknowledgements: D. Futselaar and N. Degenaar, uva_amsterdam. Work performed by ATG Medialab under contract with ESA; NASA/Swift/Cruz deWilde; ESA; Chao Zhang et al. 📸 ESA/NASA