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NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA’s Space Launch System: Powering Artemis and Enabling Discovery

The debut launch of NASA’s super-heavy lift SLS (Space Launch System) rocket in November 2022 opened a new era of deep space exploration. Called the Artemis I mission, the launch sent an uncrewed Orion spacecraft more than 268,000 miles from Earth into a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) about the Moon, before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean 25 days later. While the mission was critical for multiple reasons to NASA’s Artemis campaign, the data collected during the first launch of SLS was vital to understanding how the launch vehicle performs in the flight environment. The test flight provided real-world data to ground and improve models, on-ground testing, and vehicle performance. Data returned show a nominal launch, with many parameters accurate to pre-flight predictions to within tenths of a percent. Equipped with the data, the SLS team is readying the Artemis II vehicle. Beginning with the fourth flight, SLS variants will have multiple upgrades, which increase the capability of the rocket to enable the nation’s most ambitious missions of returning astronauts to the Moon and lunar vicinity. Current hardware progress, as well as Artemis I flight data, will be provided. Additionally, the test programs that enabled the successful first flight will be discussed.

John Honeycutt↗

NASA NTRS2020

Systems Development, Data Mining, and Knowledge Discovery

I worked as a NASA OSTEM virtually during the Fall 2020 term. Working in the IT division under my mentor Dr. Ali Shaykhian, our overall goal for the duration of this internship is to get a better understanding of the Visual Basic Language and how it can be used to make forms and collaboration with other workers to be more dynamics. I also worked with 3 other interns throughout this internship, using Microsoft Office to help each other to get a better understanding of how we approached our projects individually. Every week, my mentor Dr. Ali assigned me a task and a goal to finish by the end of each week. My overall project was figuring out a way to make email submissions and emails in general more dynamic for the NASA database. For example, instead of only using the same generic email for hundreds of different workers, a code can be used to send an individual email with more personalization such as each recipient’s name and personal info. I have also been assigned to create an email graphical user interface by the end of this internship. For these tasks to be made possible, I had to learn more about the capabilities of Microsoft Office, such as Macros in Microsoft Excel and Visual Basic in both Microsoft Excel and Word. Although it was challenging at first, I developed new programming skilled in a new language and actually made it possible to create this code along the way. Alongside doing the individual assignments, Dr. Ali also assigned up to replicate other intern’s work to get a better understanding of their approach and learn how to do it ourselves.

Janelisse Morales Gonzalez↗

NASA NTRS2013

High Voltage Hall Accelerator Propulsion System Development for NASA Science Missions

NASA Science Mission Directorates In-Space Propulsion Technology Program is sponsoring the development of a 3.8 kW-class engineering development unit Hall thruster for implementation in NASA science and exploration missions. NASA Glenn Research Center and Aerojet are developing a high fidelity high voltage Hall accelerator (HiVHAc) thruster that can achieve specific impulse magnitudes greater than 2,700 seconds and xenon throughput capability in excess of 300 kilograms. Performance, plume mappings, thermal characterization, and vibration tests of the HiVHAc engineering development unit thruster have been performed. In addition, the HiVHAc project is also pursuing the development of a power processing unit (PPU) and xenon feed system (XFS) for integration with the HiVHAc engineering development unit thruster. Colorado Power Electronics and NASA Glenn Research Center have tested a brassboard PPU for more than 1,500 hours in a vacuum environment, and a new brassboard and engineering model PPU units are under development. VACCO Industries developed a xenon flow control module which has undergone qualification testing and will be integrated with the HiVHAc thruster extended duration tests. Finally, recent mission studies have shown that the HiVHAc propulsion system has sufficient performance for four Discovery- and two New Frontiers-class NASA design reference missions.

Kamhawi, Hani↗

NASA NTRS2009

An Intelligent Archive Testbed Incorporating Data Mining

Many significant advances have occurred during the last two decades in remote sensing instrumentation, computation, storage, and communication technology. A series of Earth observing satellites have been launched by U.S. and international agencies and have been operating and collecting global data on a regular basis. These advances have created a data rich environment for scientific research and applications. NASA s Earth Observing System (EOS) Data and Information System (EOSDIS) has been operational since August 1994 with support for pre-EOS data. Currently, EOSDIS supports all the EOS missions including Terra (1999), Aqua (2002), ICESat (2002) and Aura (2004). EOSDIS has been effectively capturing, processing and archiving several terabytes of standard data products each day. It has also been distributing these data products at a rate of several terabytes per day to a diverse and globally distributed user community (Ramapriyan et al. 2009). There are other NASA-sponsored data system activities including measurement-based systems such as the Ocean Data Processing System and the Precipitation Processing system, and several projects under the Research, Education and Applications Solutions Network (REASoN), Making Earth Science Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs), and the Advancing Collaborative Connections for Earth-Sun System Science (ACCESS) programs. Together, these activities provide a rich set of resources constituting a value chain for users to obtain data at various levels ranging from raw radiances to interdisciplinary model outputs. The result has been a significant leap in our understanding of the Earth systems that all humans depend on for their enjoyment, livelihood, and survival. The trend in the community today is towards many distributed sets of providers of data and services. Despite this, visions for the future include users being able to locate, fuse and utilize data with location transparency and high degree of interoperability, and being able to convert data to information and usable knowledge in an efficient, convenient manner, aided significantly by automation (Ramapriyan et al. 2004; NASA 2005). We can look upon the distributed provider environment with capabilities to convert data to information and to knowledge as an Intelligent Archive in the Context of a Knowledge Building system (IA-KBS). Some of the key capabilities of an IA-KBS are: Virtual Product Generation, Significant Event Detection, Automated Data Quality Assessment, Large-Scale Data Mining, Dynamic Feedback Loop, and Data Discovery and Efficient Requesting (Ramapriyan et al. 2004).

Ramapriyan, H.↗

NASA NTRS2008

Building on 50 Years of Systems Engineering Experience for a New Era of Space Exploration

Over the past 50 years, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has delivered space transportation solutions for America's complex missions, ranging from scientific payloads that expand knowledge, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, to astronauts and lunar rovers destined for voyages to the Moon. Currently, the venerable Space Shuttle, which has been in service since 1981, provides the United States (US) capability for both crew and heavy cargo to low-Earth orbit to construct the International Space Station, before the Shuttle is retired in 2010. In the next decade, NASA will replace this system with a duo of launch vehicles: the Ares I crew launch vehicle and the Ares V cargo launch vehicle. The goals for this new system include increased safety and reliability coupled with lower operations costs that promote sustainable space exploration for decades to come. The Ares I will loft the Orion crew exploration vehicle, while the heavy-lift Ares V will carry the Altair lunar lander, as well as the equipment and supplies needed to construct a lunar outpost for a new generation of human and robotic space pioneers. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Shuttle's propulsion elements and is managing the design and development of the Ares rockets, along with a host of other engineering assignments in the field of scientific space exploration. Specifically, the Marshall Center's Engineering Directorate houses the skilled workforce and unique facilities needed to build capable systems upon the foundation laid by the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle programs. This paper will provide details of the in-house systems engineering and vehicle integration work now being performed for the Ares I and planned for the Ares V. It will give an overview of the Ares I system-level testing activities, such as the ground vibration testing that will be conducted in the Marshall Center's Dynamic Test Stand to verify the integrated vehicle stack's structural integrity and to validate computer modeling and simulation, as well as the main propulsion test article analysis to be conducted in the Static Test Stand. Ultimately, fielding a robust space transportation solution that will carry international explorers and essential payloads will pave the way for a new era of scientific discovery now dawning beyond planet Earth.

Dumbacher, Daniel L.↗

NASA NTRS2011

Lessons Learned for Planning and Estimating Operations Support Requirements

Operations (phase E) costs are typically small compared to the spacecraft development and test costs. This, combined with the long lead time for realizing operations costs, can lead projects to focus on hardware development schedules and costs, de-emphasizing estimation of operations support requirements during proposal, early design, and replan cost exercises. The Discovery and New Frontiers (D&NF) programs comprise small, cost-capped missions supporting scientific exploration of the solar system. Even moderate yearly underestimates of the operations costs can present significant LCC impacts for deep space missions with long operational durations, and any LCC growth can directly impact the programs ability to fund new missions. The D&NF Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center recently studied cost overruns for 7 D&NF missions related to phase C/D development of operational capabilities and phase E mission operations. The goal was to identify the underlying causes for the overruns and develop practical mitigations to assist the D&NF projects in identifying potential operations risks and controlling the associated impacts to operations development and execution costs. The study found that the drivers behind these overruns include overly optimistic assumptions regarding the savings resulting from the use of heritage technology, late development of operations requirements, inadequate planning for sustaining engineering and the special requirements of long duration missions (e.g., knowledge retention and hardware/software refresh), and delayed completion of ground system development work. This presentation summarizes the study and the results, providing a set of lessons NASA can use to improve early estimation and validation of operations costs.

Newhouse, Marilyn↗

NASA NTRS2003

Microbeam Investigations of Presolar and Early Solar System Materials

This grant provided three years of funding to initiate an independent research program in Cosmochemistry at Arizona State University. Because the new equipment that was installed at ASU took longer than expected to get running, the project was extended for a fourth year with no additional funding. By the time the funds were expended, we had set up an entirely new ion microprobe laboratory at ASU, and we have been fully operational for over two years. This laboratory was funded in almost equal parts by NASA, NSF, and ASU. Papers describing the first results from this new laboratory are being published now, and the results have been making an impact on the Cosmochemistry community. While this laboratory was being built, I continued my research program in collaboration with G. J. Wasserburg at Caltech. As equipment became available, I gradually shifted my research to ASU. Over the lifetime of this grant, my research program resulted in 12 papers and 13 abstracts on topics ranging from presolar grains (2 papers, 3 abstracts), short-lived radionuclides (6 papers, 6 abstracts), chemical compositions of chondritic materials (3 papers, 3 abstracts), silicon isotopic fractionation (1 abstract), and the oxygen composition of the Sun (1 paper). The most important results of this period were the discovery of presolar hibonite in a meteorite residue, the measurement of 26A1 in CAIs from enstatite chondrites, and the measurements of 10Be in type A CAIs from CV chondrites. All of these results have had a significant impact on research in Cosmochemstry.

Huss, Gary R.↗

NASA NTRS2018

NASA's Space Launch System Moves into Testing and Integration

NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) has moved from design and manufacturing into testing and integration for its first flight as early as December 2019. In 2017, the NASA/industry team completed manufacturing of all major structural elements for the launch vehicle for Exploration Mission-I (EM-1 ). That work included shipping the first major flight hardware element to the launch site. The team processed all four RS-25 engines for stage integration, cast all 10 booster flight motor segments, and manufactured all five major sections of the core stage. The program also completed major structural work on the B-2 test stand at Stennis Space Center, which will be used for the core stage "green run" test; delivered the core stage and engine simulators used for training; and much of the transportation equipment for the core stage. Engineers completed structural testing on the upper stage/payload section of the vehicle as well as the engine section test article. In 2018, the program will deliver the Orion Stage Adapter (OSA) to Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) at KSC and send the test articles for the core stage liquid hydrogen tank, liquid oxygen tank, and intertank to NASA's Marshall Space Flight center for structural testing. Additionally, workers will begin the challenging process of integrating the major sections of the 212-foot EM-1 core stage. This work is focused on the initial Block 1 variant of SLS, capable of launching more than 70 metric tons (t) to low Earth orbit (LEO). However, work concurrently is underway on the Block lB variant, which will enable 105 t to LEO and more than 37t to trans-lunar injection (TLI). Block lB will be the workhorse vehicle of NASA's lunar exploration plans. As the needs of the nation's deep space exploration program grow, SLS performance is designed to evolve to a payload mass of 130 t to LEO and up to 45t to TLI. The advantages of this mass - as well as volume- are critical to the entire exploration architecture for deep space exploration. They translate to greater capability, greater infrastructure and operational simplicity, less overall mission risk, and opportunities to accomplish unprecedented exploration and discovery. This paper will discuss SLS progress to date and planned future work.

Honeycutt, John↗

NASA NTRS2016

NASA's SPACE LAUNCH SYSTEM: Development and Progress

NASA is embarked on a new era of space exploration that will lead to new capabilities, new destinations, and new discoveries by both human and robotic explorers. Today, the International Space Station (ISS) and robotic probes are yielding knowledge that will help make this exploration possible. NASA is developing both the Orion crew vehicle and the Space Launch System (SLS) (Figure 1), that will carry out a series of increasingly challenging missions leading to human exploration of Mars. This paper will discuss the development and progress on the SLS. The SLS architecture was designed to be safe, affordable, and sustainable. The current configuration is the result of literally thousands of trade studies involving cost, performance, mission requirements, and other metrics. The initial configuration of SLS, designated Block 1, will launch a minimum of 70 metric tons (mT) (154,324 pounds) into low Earth orbit - significantly greater capability than any current launch vehicle. It is designed to evolve to a capability of 130 mT (286,601 pounds) through the use of upgraded main engines, advanced boosters, and a new upper stage. With more payload mass and volume capability than any existing rocket, SLS offers mission planners larger payloads, faster trip times, simpler design, shorter design cycles, and greater opportunity for mission success. Since the program was officially created in fall 2011, it has made significant progress toward launch readiness in 2018. Every major element of SLS continued to make significant progress in 2015. Engineers fired Qualification Motor 1 (QM-1) in March 2015 to test the 5-segment motor, including new insulation, joint, and propellant grain designs. More than 70 major components of test article and flight hardware for the Core Stage have been manufactured. Seven test firings have been completed with an RS-25 engine under SLS operating conditions. The test article for the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) has also been completed. Major work continues in 2016 as the program continues both flight and development RS-25 engine testing, begins welding test article and flight core stage tanks, completes stage adapter manufacturing, and test fires the second booster qualification motor. This paper will discuss the program's key accomplishments to date and the challenging work ahead for what will be the world's most capable launch vehicle.

Honeycutt, John↗

NASA NTRS2016

NASA's Space Launch System: Development and Progress

NASA is embarked on a new era of space exploration that will lead to new capabilities, new destinations, and new discoveries by both human and robotic explorers. Today, the International Space Station (ISS), supported by NASA's commercial partners, and robotic probes, are yielding knowledge that will help make this exploration possible. NASA is developing both the Orion crew vehicle and the Space Launch System (SLS) that will carry out a series of increasingly challenging missions that will eventually lead to human exploration of Mars. This paper will discuss the development and progress on the SLS. The SLS architecture was designed to be safe, affordable, and sustainable. The current configuration is the result of literally thousands of trade studies involving cost, performance, mission requirements, and other metrics. The initial configuration of SLS, designated Block 1, will launch a minimum of 70 metric tons (t) into low Earth orbit - significantly greater capability than any current launch vehicle. It is designed to evolve to a capability of 130 t through the use of upgraded main engines, advanced boosters, and a new upper stage. With more payload mass and volume capability than any rocket in history, SLS offers mission planners larger payloads, faster trip times, simpler design, shorter design cycles, and greater opportunity for mission success. Since the program was officially created in fall 2011, it has made significant progress toward first launch readiness of the Block 1 vehicle in 2018. Every major element of SLS continued to make significant progress in 2015. The Boosters element fired Qualification Motor 1 (QM-1) in March 2015, to test the 5-segment motor, including new insulation, joint, and propellant grain designs. The Stages element marked the completion of more than 70 major components of test article and flight core stage tanks. The Liquid Engines element conducted seven test firings of an RS-25 engine under SLS conditions. The Spacecraft/Payload Integration and Evolution element marked completion of the upper stage test article. Major work continues in 2016 as the program continues both flight and development RS-25 engine testing, begins welding test article and flight core stage tanks, completes stage adapter manufacturing, and test fires the second booster qualification motor. This paper will discuss the program's key accomplishments to date and the challenging work ahead for what will be the world's most capable launch vehicle.

Honeycutt, John↗

NASA NTRS2006

NASA Crew Launch Vehicle Approach Builds on Lessons from Past and Present Missions

The United States Vision for Space Exploration, announced in January 2004, outlines the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) strategic goals and objectives, including retiring the Space Shuttle and replacing it with a new human-rated system suitable for missions to the Moon and Mars. The Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) that the new Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV) lofts into space early next decade will initially ferry astronauts to the International Space Station and be capable of carrying crews back to lunar orbit and of supporting missions to Mars orbit. NASA is using its extensive experience gained from past and ongoing launch vehicle programs to maximize the CLV system design approach, with the objective of reducing total lifecycle costs through operational efficiencies. To provide in-depth data for selecting this follow-on launch vehicle, the Exploration Systems Architecture Study was conducted during the summer of 2005, following the confirmation of the new NASA Administrator. A team of aerospace subject matter experts used technical, budget, and schedule objectives to analyze a number of potential launch systems, with a focus on human rating for exploration missions. The results showed that a variant of the Space Shuttle, utilizing the reusable Solid Rocket Booster as the first stage, along with a new upper stage that uses a derivative of the RS-25 Space Shuttle Main Engine to deliver 25 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, was the best choice to reduce the risks associated with fielding a new system in a timely manner. The CLV Project, managed by the Exploration Launch Office located at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, is leading the design, development, testing, and operation of this new human-rated system. The CLV Project works closely with the Space Shuttle Program to transition hardware, infrastructure, and workforce assets to the new launch system . leveraging a wealth of lessons learned from Shuttle operations. The CL V is being designed to reduce costs through a number of methods, ranging from validating requirements to conducting trades studies against the concept design. Innovations such as automated processing will build on lessons learned from the Shuttle, other launch systems, Department of Defense operations experience, and subscale flight tests such as the Delta Clipper-Experimental Advanced (DCXA) vehicle operations that utilized minimal touch labor, automated cryogen ic propellant loading , and an 8-hour turnaround for a cryogenic propulsion system. For the CLV, the results of hazard analyses are contributing to an integrated vehicle health monitoring system that will troubleshoot anomalies and determine which ones can be solved without human intervention. Such advances will help streamline the mission operations process for pilots and ground controllers alike. In fiscal year 2005, NASA invested approximately $4.5 billion of its $16 bill ion budget on the Space Shuttle. The ultimate goal of the CLV Project is to deliver a safe, reliable system designed to minimize lifecycle costs so that NASA's budget can be invested in missions of scientific discovery. Lessons learned from developing the CLV will be applied to the growth path for future systems, including a heavy lift launch vehicle.

Dumbacher, Daniel L.↗

NASA NTRS2017

NASA's Orgins Space Telescope Mission and Its Synergies with SOFIA

The Origins Space Telescope (OST) is the mission concept for the Far Infrared Surveyor, a study in development by NASA in preparation for the 2020 Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey. The science program that has been selected to drive the OST performance requirements is broad, covering four main themes: Charting the Rise of Metals, Dust, and the First Galaxies; Unveiling the Growth of Black Holes and Galaxies Over Cosmic Time; Tracing the Signatures of Life and the Ingredients of Habitable Worlds; and Characterizing Small Bodies in the Solar System. The OST telescope itself will have a primary mirror diameter of 8-15 m (depending on the launch vehicle that is selected), will be diffraction-limited at 40m, and will be actively cooled to approximately 5K. Five science instruments have been base-lined for the observatory: a heterodyne instrument covering 150-500 m with a spectral resolving power of R1e7; a low-spectral resolution (R500) spectrometer covering 35-500 m; a high-spectral resolution (R1e5) spectrometer covering 50-500 m; a far-infrared imager (R15) covering 35-500m; and a mid-infrared imagerspectrometer (R15-500) covering 6-40m. In addition to having a vastly higher sensitivity than the corresponding SOFIA instrumentation that will allow more detailed follow-up of SOFIAs discoveries, the OST mission will be configured to provide efficient large-area mapping, which will further complement SOFIAs science capabilities by providing new targets for study by SOFIA. Furthermore, new SOFIA instruments can provide an excellent testbed for the advanced far-infrared detector technologies what will be required to achieve the anticipated OST performance.

Mission↗

NASA NTRS2018

NASA's Earth Observing Data and Information System - Near-Term Challenges

NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) has been a central component of the NASA Earth observation program since the 1990's. EOSDIS manages data covering a wide range of Earth science disciplines including cryosphere, land cover change, polar processes, field campaigns, ocean surface, digital elevation, atmosphere dynamics and composition, and inter-disciplinary research, and many others. One of the key components of EOSDIS is a set of twelve discipline-based Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) distributed across the United States. Managed by NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project at Goddard Space Flight Center, these DAACs serve over 3 million users globally. The ESDIS Project provides the infrastructure support for EOSDIS, which includes other components such as the Science Investigator-led Processing systems (SIPS), common metadata and metrics management systems, specialized network systems, standards management, and centralized support for use of commercial cloud capabilities. Given the long-term requirements, and the rapid pace of information technology and changing expectations of the user community, EOSDIS has evolved continually over the past three decades. However, many challenges remain. Challenges addressed in this paper include: growing volume and variety, achieving consistency across a diverse set of data producers, managing information about a large number of datasets, migration to a cloud computing environment, optimizing data discovery and access, incorporating user feedback from a diverse community, keeping metadata updated as data collections grow and age, and ensuring that all the content needed for understanding datasets by future users is identified and preserved.

Remote Sensing↗

NASA NTRS1992

Something is wrong with climate theory

We frequently forget that there is more to science than the making of a more precise measurement or a more elaborate calculation. It is even more than applying to new problems the methods that worked on old problems. These activities, which keep most of us busy most of the time, are important, but the new and unexpected discoveries are more important. And many radically new discoveries arise from scientific puzzles, the "anomalies." We believe that studies of past climates have exposed an anomaly that deserves attention and that may result in a fundamentally new understanding of the climate system. The poles have been much warmer throughout much of Earth's history than they are now. Ice-age episodes with durations of millions of years have been separated by periods of hundreds of millions of years that have left little or no evidence of polar ice sheets. The data are best for the most recent of these ice-free episodes so we will concentrate on the Eocene.

Non-NASA Center↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

JETT3: A Holistic, Integrated Analog for Artemis Lunar Surface Exploration

Since 1972, NASA astronauts have performed hundreds of Extravehicular Activities (EVAs) in support of Skylab, Space Shuttle and International Space Station missions. Not since Apollo, however, have EVAs been driven by discovery-based principles of scientific exploration. Upcoming Artemis missions are challenged to build on lessons learned from Apollo, merging 50 years of EVA experience with the planetary science community’s expertise in the remote surface exploration of Mars. The highest-fidelity preparation for Artemis includes both operational and scientific underpinning to represent the complete, complex picture of lunar surface operations. The Joint EVA & Human Surface Mobility Test Team (JETT) is an interdisciplinary team providing such an environment for collaborative analog testing. JETT builds upon prior analog campaigns (e.g., [1, 2]) to provide high-fidelity environments for hardware and concept of operations development. Sponsored by the NASA EVA & Human Surface Mobility Program (EHP), JETT includes representatives from EHP, NASA Engineering, the Science Mission Directorate (SMD), Human Health & Performance, and the Flight Operations Directorate (FOD). JETT tests evaluate NASA reference designs for EVA (e.g., suits and tools), address gaps and risks for Artemis lunar surface operations, develop capabilities for EVA and science tasks, enable technology maturation, and provide training for Artemis EVA operations. JETT3, the final JETT field test of FY22, occurred Oct 3-11, 2022 in the San Francisco Volcanic Field north of Flagstaff, AZ. The test focused on developing the Artemis concept of operations and systems, including integrating an Artemis-like Science Team into a NASA Flight Control Team (FCT) to plan and execute a series of simulated lunar EVAs in an environment analogous to Artemis 3.

T. E. Caswell↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

JETT3: A Holistic, Integrated Analog for Artemis Lunar Surface Exploration

T. E. Caswell↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA’s Human Data Repositories: An In Depth Look at the New Data Request Process

As NASA transitions its focus to travel back to the moon and on to new destinations, the need to ensure the capture, analysis, and application of research and medical data is of greater urgency than at any other previous time. In this era of limited resources and challenging schedules, the Human Research Program (HRP), based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC), recognizes the need to extract the greatest possible amount of information from the data already captured. To this end, the HRP Chief Scientist Office (CSO), HRP Program Planning and Control (PP&C) Office, and the Space Medicine Operations Division have been working together to make reuse of both research data and medical monitoring data more accessible to the user community through the Life Science Data Archive (LSDA) and the Lifetime Surveillance of Astronaut Health (LSAH) Repositories. The task of both LSDA and LSAH repositories is to acquire, preserve, and distribute retrospective research (LSDA) and medical (LSAH) data and information both within the NASA community and to the science community at large, for knowledge discovery, retrospective analysis, and planning of future research studies. An additional goal is to encourage collaboration with non-NASA institutions also faced with enhancing human performance in extreme environments. In September 2022, the LSDA website and its contents transitioned to a new NASA Life Sciences Portal (https://nlsp.nasa.gov/explore/lsdahome). This site continues to feature publicly releasable information such as non-attributable datasets, experiment descriptions (from Project Mercury to ISS, as well as from multiple flight analog missions), descriptions of medical monitoring data, and LSAH newsletters (1992 - 2022). The website also provides an updated portal to request additional research and medical data not accessible from the public website. This presentation will provide an in-depth look at the new system as it relates to finding and requesting retrospective data. We will also detail processes from making a request to delivering data for different types of data requests (i.e., attributable, or non-attributable). This includes descriptions of various approval boards, what information and actions the requestor is responsible for, and key milestones in making data available for reuse.

D. M. Thomas↗

NASA NTRS2017

New Developments in NASA's Rodent Research Hardware for Conducting Long Duration Biomedical and Basic Research in Space

Animal models, particularly rodents, are the foundation of pre-clinical research to understand human diseases and evaluate new therapeutics, and play a key role in advancing biomedical discoveries both on Earth and in space. The National Research Councils Decadal survey emphasized the importance of expanding NASA's life sciences research to perform long duration, rodent experiments on the International Space Station (ISS) to study effects of the space environment on the musculoskeletal and neurological systems of mice as model organisms of human health and disease, particularly in areas of muscle atrophy, bone loss, and fracture healing. To accomplish this objective, flight hardware, operations, and science capabilities were developed at NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) to enhance science return for both commercial (CASIS) and government-sponsored rodent research. The Rodent Research Project at NASA ARC has pioneered a new research capability on the International Space Station and has progressed toward translating research to the ISS utilizing commercial rockets, collaborating with academia and science industry, while training crewmembers to assist in performing research on orbit. The Rodent Research Habitat provides a living environment for animals on ISS according to standard animal welfare requirements, and daily health checks can be performed using the habitats camera system. Results from these studies contribute to the science community via both the primary investigation and banked samples that are shared in publicly available data repository such as GeneLab. Following each flight, through the Biospecimen Sharing Program (BSP), numerous tissues and thousands of samples will be harvested, and distributed from the Space Life and Physical Sciences (SLPS) to Principal Investigators (PIs) through the Ames Life Science Data Archive (ALSDA). Every completed mission sets a foundation to build and design greater complexity into future research and answer questions about common human diseases. Together, the hardware improvements (enrichment, telemetry sensors, cameras), new capabilities (live animal return), and experience that the Rodent Research team has gained working with principal investigator teams and ISS crew to conduct complex experiments on orbit are expanding capabilities for long duration rodent research on the ISS to achieve both basic science and biomedical research objectives.

Shirazi, Yasaman↗