Shielding astronauts from the deadly radiation they face is a central challenge for any designer of a deep-space crewed mission. Even relatively low levels of exposure over long periods can lead to everything from central nervous system damage to cancer. But current solutions, such as passive water shells or active superconducting magnets, have their own limitations. To get around those, a new paper, available in preprint on arXiv by Valerio Parisi and a team of researchers from Italy and Germany, looks at the feasibility of using a permanent magnet (and its associated permanent magnetic field) to potentially block some of that radiation without the costs of competing technologies.

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