ISS Lessons Learned, Looking ahead to Artemis
A review of some lessons from integrated testing for the International Space Station and applying those lessons toward aspects of the Artemis campaign.
International Space Station↗
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Science Off the Earth: an Integrated Approach to Science Operations in the Artemis Era and Beyond
Humanity is standing on the cusp of its next giant leap – an international, sustainable, and commercial return to the moon. Unlike the Apollo missions, the expectation that a permanent human presence will be established is well founded. Initially, crewed missions to the lunar surface are expected to last between 6 and 30 days and occur approximately once per year, however the robust suite of landers and orbiting assets proposed by both commercial and government entities provide an opportunity to conduct science research on the moon and in cis-lunar space, 24x7 for many years. In the 50 years since the conclusion of Apollo, NASA’s crewed space science missions have been evolving. This can be seen clearly from Skylab and the Space Shuttle’s Spacelab to the International Space Station (ISS). Presently aboard the ISS, international crews spend nearly half their time working on experiments while many payloads collect science non-stop with either very limited, or no crew interaction. Additionally, a fleet of orbiting experiments complement and validate those investigations performed on the ISS. As the number, variety, and complexity of these investigation increase, it becomes ever more necessary to integrate across the many entities involved to prevent duplication of effort, ensure complementary results, reduce cost, and create a sustainable environment to conduct groundbreaking scientific research in space. In this paper, we examine how the various elements of the Artemis program including NASA’s Lunar Gateway, Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) endeavor, the Human Landing Systems (HLS), surface habitats, rovers and many more will be operated to ensure interoperability, maximize science return, and enable success for government, commercial and private partners.
Science Operations↗
Returning to the Moon: NASA's Artemis Missions
It is a presentation for elementary and middle school kids to describe and discuss NASA's Artemis program.
Artemis↗
Science Off the Earth: An Integrated Approach to Science Operations in the Artemis Era and Beyond
Humanity is standing on the cusp of its next giant leap – an international, sustainable, and commercial return to the moon. Unlike the Apollo missions, the expectation that a permanent human presence will be established is well founded. Initially, crewed missions to the lunar surface are expected to last between 6 and 30 days and occur approximately once per year, however the robust suite of landers and orbiting assets proposed by both commercial and government entities provide an opportunity to conduct science research on the moon and in cis-lunar space, 24x7 for many years. In the 50 years since the conclusion of Apollo, NASA’s crewed space science missions have been evolving. This can be seen clearly from Skylab and the Space Shuttle’s Spacelab to the International Space Station (ISS). Presently aboard the ISS, international crews spend nearly half their time working on experiments while many payloads collect science non-stop with either very limited, or no crew interaction. Additionally, a fleet of orbiting experiments complement and validate those investigations performed on the ISS. As the number, variety, and complexity of these investigation increase, it becomes ever more necessary to integrate across the many entities involved to prevent duplication of effort, ensure complementary results, reduce cost, and create a sustainable environment to conduct groundbreaking scientific research in space. In this paper, we examine how the various elements of the Artemis program including NASA’s Lunar Gateway, Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) endeavor, the Human Landing Systems (HLS), surface habitats, rovers and many more will be operated to ensure interoperability, maximize science return, and enable success for government, commercial and private partners.
Science Operations↗
Review of Artemis I Mission Radiation Challenges and Data for the Crew Module
We review the Artemis-I mission and corresponding radiation-hardness assurance (RHA) process. We discuss the RHA methodologies employed, design challenges, culture challenges and some flight data vs. rate estimations.
ionizing radiation↗
Review of Artemis I Mission Radiation Challenges and Data for the Crew Module
We review the Artemis-I mission and corresponding radiation-hardness assurance (RHA) process. We discuss the RHA methodologies employed, design challenges, culture challenges and some flight data vs. rate estimations.
ionizing radiation↗
Artemis I Off-Nominal-Trajectory Design and Optimization
In order to achieve the Artemis I mission objectives to human-rate the Orion spacecraft even under off-nominal conditions, trajectories were developed to handle contingency scenarios: alternate missions for contingencies before or during the Trans-Lunar Injection burn, recoveries to return Orion to the nominal trajectory after a delayed or partial burn, and abort trajectories to return the spacecraft to Earth after a critical failure. In addition, disposal trajectories were generated for situations where recovery was not an option. Details are given on the trajectory characteristics, solution families, the generation of the trajectories, and operations considerations.
Artemis I↗
Trajectory Operations of the Artemis I Mission
This paper describes the operational design and execution of the Artemis I trajectory. It was an operationally complex trajectory with powered lunar flybys and insertion into a Distant Retrograde Orbit (DRO). A joint team of trajectory analysts at the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) were responsible for the design and operation of nominal and off-nominal in-space trajectories. A process was developed to convert optimized reference trajectories into Orion burn plans that could be uplinked to the vehicle. During the mission, the joint flight controller and engineering team continuously evaluated upcoming translational burns using actual vehicle conditions, monitored the trajectory for opportunities to re-optimize the trajectory in order to reduce propellant usage, and prepared for potential off-nominal scenarios. Overall Orion in-space trajectory performance is compared tomission designs to demonstrate the success of the design and operations work-flows.
Artemis I↗
Assessing the Relocation of Artemis Foundational Lunar Surface Concepts
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has defined a functionally based Moon to Mars (M2M) architecture consisting of four key human exploration segments: human lunar return (HLR), foundational exploration (FE), sustained lunar evolution (SLE), and humans to Mars (H2M). These segments are portions of the architecture which represent a stepwise increase in complexity and achievement of M2M objectives [1]. As systems are deployed during the FE segment, it may be desired or even necessary to relocate these elements on the lunar surface as the architecture transitions into the SLE segment. While some Artemis elements under development, such as rovers, are being designed for mobility during both crewed and uncrewed/dormant periods, other architectural concepts do not currently carry a mobility capability. In preparation for the Agency’s 2023 Architecture Concept Review (ACR), a team was assembled to establish a methodology for assessing the relocation feasibility of normally stationary elements. Such a capability could be applied locally or regionally, and might allow for re-purposing previously occupied terrain, expansion of exploration range, aggregation of habitation elements, or retiring systems at the end of their useful service life. The assembled NASA team investigated the relocation trade space through defining a representative concept of operations (ConOps) and assessing possible system impacts. The team focused predominately on the relocation of medium and large surface habitat architectural concepts through surface-based traverses utilizing separable mobility platforms (SMP). A representative mobility platform model was placed through simulation to analyze the possible energy requirements and dynamic illumination impacts. Preliminary assessment indicated that element relocation might be achievable, however significant system and architectural-level risks still need to be quantified. Future analysis will assist in determining what degree of element relocation provides the greatest benefit to achieving a sustained lunar presence. [1] NASA. (2022). Moon to Mars Objectives. Retrieved from: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/m2m-objectives-exec-summary.pdf
Artemis↗
Design and Performance of a Multi-mode Photon-counting Receiver for the NASA Orion Artemis II Optical Communications System (O2O)
A multi-mode photon-counting optical receiver was designed for the NASA Orion Artemis II Optical Communications System (O2O) optical communications downlink. The receiver achieved error-free communications from 20 Mb/s to 267 Mb/s with single-photon-level sensitivity.
O2O↗
Transfers from TLI to Lunar Frozen Orbits with Applications to NASA’s CLPS & Artemis Programs
This paper will focus on trajectory transfers from trans-lunar injection (TLI) to lunar frozen orbits with applications to NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) and Artemis Human Landing System (HLS) programs. For a CLPS application, the CS-3 mission is explored, which will deploy a communications relay satellite in lunar elliptical frozen orbit followed by landing a payload on the lunar farside during dawn. Given HLS will land a crew near the lunar south pole with lighting and timing requirements, the effect of varying the Earth-Moon transit duration to influence the approach direction upon landing will be explored.
lunar frozen orbits↗
Evaluation of Artemis I Aerodynamic Force and Moment Reconstructions and Pre-Flight Predictions for Ascent Flight
The Artemis I launch of the Space Launch System provided the first flight data for the new launch vehicle. The current paper shows comparisons of the preflight force and moment coefficient databases developed using traditional ground test and computation fluid dynamics to post-flight data reconstructions of the ascent aerodynamic force and moment coefficients. The post-flight reconstructions were developed using instrumentation on the vehicle, meteorological data, and Newton’s laws. In general, the preflight databases and post-flight reconstructed data showed similar trends throughout ascent from Mach 0.20 to Mach 3.50. Axial force coefficient showed the largest discrepancies, which is likely due to the difficulty of computing axial force from the flight data.
Space Launch System↗
Artemis I Optical Navigation System Performance
This paper summarizes the assessment of the Optical Navigation Flight Test Objective (FTO) during the flight of Artemis I. The Optical Navigation (OpNav) System was tested under a variety of range, target, and lighting conditions to evaluate the performance compared to the pre-flight predicted error models. In general, OpNav performed very well – successfully processing over a thousand images of starfields, Earth, and Moon. The performance of the algorithm when processing Moon images matched the pre-flight expected error models. The errors when processing Earth images were notably higher than the pre-flight models predicted, however this was found to be due to an over-estimation of the atmosphere bias used in the tuning of the algorithm. After the bias was re-tuned and the images reprocessed, performance significantly improved.
GNC↗
Artemis I Flight Instrumentation Data Quality Assessment and Processing
This paper is in support of the SciTech 2024 Space Launch System Aerosciences Special Sessions being organized by Brent Pomeroy and Jeremy Pinier. On November 16th, 2022, NASA launched the inaugural test flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) carrying the Orion capsule into a high orbit far beyond the Moon. The launch vehicle was instrumented with over three thousand flight instrumentation sensors, which monitored aerodynamic, acoustic, structural, and thermal environments. These data are intended to validate experimental and numerical tools used to predict the design environments which the vehicle experiences during launch and ascent. Prior to launch, tests were performed at the SLS Systems Integration Laboratory (SIL) using flight-like avionics and on the integrated flight hardware of Artemis I at the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). The purpose of these tests was to characterize the data acquisition units (DAUs) used to record and telemeter flight data to ground stations in order to assure that flight test objectives can be achieved and to quantify the expected quality of the flight data. In addition, pre-flight assessment and development of tools and methods used to process and disseminate flight data at the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) were conducted and adjustments made with respect to DAU time-synchronization prior to and after the flight. This paper summarizes these tests and some aspects of the post processing of data are discussed.
Developmental Flight Instrumentation↗
Artemis I Liftoff Measurements Issues and Corrections
The SLS rocket was instrumented to collect liftoff environment data during Artemis I launch. The instruments were microphones and pressure transducers. Most data were acceptable for analysis, but required corrections for port resonance, mean signal drift, data system delays, and data spikes. The data were all transmitted via telemetry and in this process some of the measurements experienced unexpectedly long gaps in the data stream. A time validated reconstruction algorithm failed when encountering the long gaps and required use of data from a simpler reconstruction process, with manually inserted data delay corrections. This paper discusses the issues and the corrections that were necessary for the launch data to determine the true physics of the acoustics occurring during launch.
environments↗
Artemis I Liftoff Measurements Issues and Corrections
The SLS rocket was instrumented to collect liftoff environment data during Artemis I launch. The instruments were microphones and pressure transducers. Most data were acceptable for analysis, but required corrections for port resonance, mean signal drift, data system delays, and data spikes. The data were all transmitted via telemetry and in this process some of the measurements experienced unexpectedly long gaps in the data stream. A time validated reconstruction algorithm failed when encountering the long gaps and required use of data from a simpler reconstruction process, with manually inserted data delay corrections. This paper discusses the issues and the corrections that were necessary for the launch data to determine the true physics of the acoustics occurring during launch.
environments↗
Evaluation of Artemis I Aerodynamic Force and Moment Reconstructions and Preflight Predictions for Ascent Flight
The Artemis I launch of the Space Launch System provided the first flight data for the new launch vehicle. The current paper shows comparisons of the preflight force and moment coefficient databases developed using traditional ground test and computation fluid dynamics to post-flight data reconstructions of the ascent aerodynamic force and moment coefficients. The post-flight reconstructions were developed using instrumentation on the vehicle, meteorological data, and Newton’s laws. In general, the preflight databases and post-flight reconstructed data showed similar trends throughout ascent from Mach 0.20 to Mach 3.50. Axial force coefficient showed the largest discrepancies, which is likely due to the difficulty of computing axial force from the flight data.
Space Launch System↗
EVA Operations for the Artemis III Science Team
The purpose of this presentation is to give the newly selected Artemis III Science Team some basic information on EVA Operations and potential interactions with the science team in both the planning and real-time phases of the mission.
EVA↗