The Martian Radiation Environment Experiment – acronymically known as MARIE — is back online and collecting more data. As the radiation monitor was fired up, MARIE’s scientists reported Tuesday at the 33rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference that the data she returned last year reveals that space radiation is even more intense than their models had indicated. MARIE – which is on board the Mars Odyssey orbiter — is designed to collect and characterize aspects of space radiation both on the way to the Red Planet and in the Martian orbit. Her goal is to predict the radiation doses that would be encountered by future astronauts. “What MARIE allows us is the ability to see any source of radiation – background, solar – outside the vicinity of Earth’s magnetic and atmospheric system,” elaborates Roger G. Gibbs, Odyssey’s project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).