OREANDA-NEWS. July 06, 2010. Progress M-06M cargo supply vehicle has delivered a so-called ‘magic curtain’ to the International Space Station. Flight engineer Fiodor Yurchikhin will install the curtain in the starboard’s cabin of the Zvezda module. 

 The curtain designed by IBMP has special pockets for special wet hygienic towels used by cosmonauts onboard the station. The towels are saturated with hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, which mitigate space radiation effects. The curtain is equipped with the radiation doze meters. Additional anti-radiation crew protection may be provided by three-layer wet towels on the walls of the cabins, thus mitigating radiation effects for cosmonauts, scientists believe.

Result of Matreshka experiment carried out in the station since 2004 show that the radiation is about two times weaker in the center of the station then near the walls.

Phantom Matreshka-R is to monitor anti-radiation effectiveness of the wet towels.

Experiment Matreshka is to study and to analyze radiation dose distribution in cosmonaut's body during long-term mission aboard the International space station (ISS). Dose from ionizing space radiation was determined with the help of thermoluminescent dosimeters mounted in conditional depths of critical organs in human body modeled in a dosimetric device, i.e.--a ball-like tissue-equivalent phantom designed and manufactured in Russia for international space experiment Matreshka-R.