Humans are well-suited to life here on Earth — maybe not so much to other planets, according to a worrying report that suggests that humans who leave the friendly confines of our Blue Planet risk brain damage elsewhere in our Solar System.

It’s already well known that humans have to deal with extreme health hazards in space, such as extremely hot or extremely cold temperatures, cramped spaces, isolation that wreaks havoc on the human psyche, and the muscular deterioration that comes from not having to deal with any gravity.

As NASA and other space agencies mull the possibility of sending a human to an asteroid or to Mars, it has to weigh these negative effects against that — and new concerns about radiation’s effects on the brain are being added to that calculation.

Long-term exposure to cosmic radiation is one of the biggest problems facing those who wish to embark on deep-space travel. This radiation can damage DNA and result in a heightened likelihood of cancer, and research in mice suggests that it will have even further effects on the brain, as radiation will cause cognitive and memory impairments that could crop up in just a matter of months.

Supernova explosions littered throughout our universe send cosmic radiation everywhere, blasting throughout our solar system with our atmosphere keeping them at bay, safe here on Earth.

NASA has been conducting studies on space radiation and how it affects the body and has learned just how devastating it can be on human tissue.

A recent study published in the journal Science Advances by Charles Limoli, a professor of radiation oncology at the University of California Irvine School of Medicine, and his team have determined that even low levels of cosmic radiation would have extremely negative effects on human neurons that would show up in a round-trip mission to Mars, something that would take two or three years.

Researchers examined groups of mice, measuring the average age of astronauts in mouse years and using mice of a corresponding age, and then blasted those mice with charged particles similar to cosmic rays.

They found that irradiated mice were much more impaired in their ability to explore new objects in their environment — basically they lost their curiosity, or their tendency to explore — making one wonder if it might have the same effect on humans after arriving at their destination.