Photos: Fashion goes radioactive as new textile launches to visualize space radiation

A novel collaboration between Scottish scientists and fashion designer Katie Tubbing has produced multi-layered textiles dyed with pigments derived from harmless bacteria, designed to visually indicate exposure to UV and cosmic radiation. These bacteria-based pigments fade predictably as radiation breaks down their molecular structure, creating a sustainable, low-tech, battery-free warning system. The fabric’s layered design allows different colors to fade at varying radiation thresholds, providing an immediate visual cue of cumulative exposure. This innovation aims to protect astronauts on lunar missions, assist medical workers monitoring radiation, and potentially inform everyday clothing that alerts wearers to harmful sunlight. To validate the fabric’s performance in space, a sample will be launched aboard a PocketQube satellite into low Earth orbit early next year, where onboard cameras will document color changes over time. If successful, a larger patch will be sent to the Moon in 2028 to study pigment degradation under lunar radiation, marking the first Scottish-built hardware on the lunar surface. Beyond space applications, the bacteria-dyed textiles could