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NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Predictive Modeling to Assess and Address Challenges and Limitations Associated with Clinical Care and Decision Support in Deep Space

Probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) is a method for assessing and integrating the risk of failure in a multivariate system. While it is often applied by engineers designing complex machines, it could also be applied to humans to assess the probability of a health “failure” treating diseases as the multiple “variables” and the human as the “complex machine.” The Medical Extensible Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment Tool (MEDPRAT) was developed to apply PRA to assess medical risk for exploration spaceflight and inform the design of medical systems for space flight. The NASA engineering community utilizes event-driven and fault tree probabilistic techniques to classify risk in the space flight environment by leveraging the inherent knowledge of complex space flight system design and testing to quantify risk. However, in harmonizing the risk of human space flight, answering the question of “How do we balance astronaut health, performance and resource risks with other engineering risks on exploration space missions?” remains a profoundly challenging and largely qualitative practice. The Medical Extensible Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment Tool (MEDPRAT) is one aspect of the Human Research Program’s efforts to represent space fight human health and performance risks quantitatively.

L Mcintyre↗

NASA NTRS1977

Planetary radio astronomy receiver

The planetary radio astronomy (PRA) experiment on the Voyager spacecraft will measure the amplitude, spectrum, time variations, and polarization of radio emissions over a frequency range of 1.2 kHz to 40.5 MHz with the aid of the PRA receiver (PRAR) and two 10-m orthogonal monopoles. Sensitivity and dynamic range will allow observation of a wide range of Jovian emissions from near earth to encounter. This paper describes the system elements, including the preamp/attenuator/calibrator, the LF polarization discriminator, the four LF-IF amplifier stages, the HF polarization discriminator, the translation LO, the log-IF and detector, the frequency synthesizer, the data processor, control system, power supply, and antennas.

Lang, G. J.↗

NASA NTRS2015

Dynamic Modeling of Ascent Abort Scenarios for Crewed Launches

For the last 30 years, the United States' human space program has been focused on low Earth orbit exploration and operations with the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs. After over 40 years, the U.S. is again working to return humans beyond Earth orbit. To do so, NASA is developing a new launch vehicle and spacecraft to provide this capability. The launch vehicle is referred to as the Space Launch System (SLS) and the spacecraft is called Orion. The new launch system is being developed with an abort system that will enable the crew to escape launch failures that would otherwise be catastrophic as well as probabilistic design requirements set for probability of loss of crew (LOC) and loss of mission (LOM). In order to optimize the risk associated with designing this new launch system, as well as verifying the associated requirements, NASA has developed a comprehensive Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) of the integrated ascent phase of the mission that includes the launch vehicle, spacecraft and ground launch facilities. Given the dynamic nature of rocket launches and the potential for things to go wrong, developing a PRA to assess the risk can be a very challenging effort. Prior to launch and after the crew has boarded the spacecraft, the risk exposure time can be on the order of three hours. During this time, events may initiate from either the spacecraft, the launch vehicle, or the ground systems, thus requiring an emergency egress from the spacecraft to a safe ground location or a pad abort via the spacecraft's launch abort system. Following launch, again either the spacecraft or the launch vehicle can initiate the need for the crew to abort the mission and return home. Obviously, there are thousands of scenarios whose outcome depends on when the abort is initiated during ascent and how the abort is performed. This includes modeling the risk associated with explosions and benign system failures that require aborting a spacecraft under very dynamic conditions, particularly in the lower atmosphere, and returning the crew home safely. This paper will provide an overview of the PRA model that has been developed of this new launch system, including some of the challenges that are associated with this effort.

Bigler, Mark↗

NASA NTRS2015

Dynamic Modeling of Ascent Abort Scenarios for Crewed Launches

For the last 30 years, the United States's human space program has been focused on low Earth orbit exploration and operations with the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs. After nearly 50 years, the U.S. is again working to return humans beyond Earth orbit. To do so, NASA is developing a new launch vehicle and spacecraft to provide this capability. The launch vehicle is referred to as the Space Launch System (SLS) and the spacecraft is called Orion. The new launch system is being developed with an abort system that will enable the crew to escape launch failures that would otherwise be catastrophic as well as probabilistic design requirements set for probability of loss of crew (LOC) and loss of mission (LOM). In order to optimize the risk associated with designing this new launch system, as well as verifying the associated requirements, NASA has developed a comprehensive Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) of the integrated ascent phase of the mission that includes the launch vehicle, spacecraft and ground launch facilities. Given the dynamic nature of rocket launches and the potential for things to go wrong, developing a PRA to assess the risk can be a very challenging effort. Prior to launch and after the crew has boarded the spacecraft, the risk exposure time can be on the order of three hours. During this time, events may initiate from either of the spacecraft, the launch vehicle, or the ground systems, thus requiring an emergency egress from the spacecraft to a safe ground location or a pad abort via the spacecraft's launch abort system. Following launch, again either the spacecraft or the launch vehicle can initiate the need for the crew to abort the mission and return to the home. Obviously, there are thousands of scenarios whose outcome depends on when the abort is initiated during ascent as to how the abort is performed. This includes modeling the risk associated with explosions and benign system failures that require aborting a spacecraft under very dynamic conditions, particularly in the lower atmosphere, and returning the crew home safely. This paper will provide an overview of the PRA model that has been developed of this new launch system, including some of the challenges that are associated with this effort. Key Words: PRA, space launches, human space program, ascent abort, spacecraft, launch vehicles

Bigler, Mark↗

NASA NTRS2015

Reliability and Probabilistic Risk Assessment - How They Play Together

PRA methodology is one of the probabilistic analysis methods that NASA brought from the nuclear industry to assess the risk of LOM, LOV and LOC for launch vehicles. PRA is a system scenario based risk assessment that uses a combination of fault trees, event trees, event sequence diagrams, and probability and statistical data to analyze the risk of a system, a process, or an activity. It is a process designed to answer three basic questions: What can go wrong? How likely is it? What is the severity of the degradation? Since 1986, NASA, along with industry partners, has conducted a number of PRA studies to predict the overall launch vehicles risks. Planning Research Corporation conducted the first of these studies in 1988. In 1995, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) conducted a comprehensive PRA study. In July 1996, NASA conducted a two-year study (October 1996 - September 1998) to develop a model that provided the overall Space Shuttle risk and estimates of risk changes due to proposed Space Shuttle upgrades. After the Columbia accident, NASA conducted a PRA on the Shuttle External Tank (ET) foam. This study was the most focused and extensive risk assessment that NASA has conducted in recent years. It used a dynamic, physics-based, integrated system analysis approach to understand the integrated system risk due to ET foam loss in flight. Most recently, a PRA for Ares I launch vehicle has been performed in support of the Constellation program. Reliability, on the other hand, addresses the loss of functions. In a broader sense, reliability engineering is a discipline that involves the application of engineering principles to the design and processing of products, both hardware and software, for meeting product reliability requirements or goals. It is a very broad design-support discipline. It has important interfaces with many other engineering disciplines. Reliability as a figure of merit (i.e. the metric) is the probability that an item will perform its intended function(s) for a specified mission profile. In general, the reliability metric can be calculated through the analyses using reliability demonstration and reliability prediction methodologies. Reliability analysis is very critical for understanding component failure mechanisms and in identifying reliability critical design and process drivers. The following sections discuss the PRA process and reliability engineering in detail and provide an application where reliability analysis and PRA were jointly used in a complementary manner to support a Space Shuttle flight risk assessment.

Safie, Fayssal M.↗

NASA NTRS2000

A Reliable Earth Return System for Safe Recovery of Mars Samples

The objective of a Mars sample return mission is to bring selected Mars surface materials to Earth. Numerous approaches for the Earth-return segment have been analyzed including propulsive or aerocapture return to low-Earth orbit followed by Space Shuttle rendezvous and direct entry. Of these approaches, ballistic entry of a small capsule terminating in a ground landing has been shown to be the lowest risk strategy. Over the past two years, significant work has been performed towards development of a robust direct entry vehicle for Mars sample return. In June 1999, the NASA Planetary Protection Officer provided initial guidance to the former Mars Sample Return Project. The sample return phase of the mission was assigned a restricted Earth return planetary protection classification. The draft mission requirement states that the total mean probability of release of unsterilized Mars material into the Earth;s biosphere must be less than 1.0E-06 (1 in a million). This strict requirement drives the approach and design of the Earth return system. To meet this requirement, selection of the Earth return strategy and development of the Earth return system must be guided by risk, not performance, based decisions. An initial Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) was performed to address the direct entry Earth return system containment assurance reliability and to identify high-risk elements of this system. The results of this PRA identified risk elements that include thermal protection system performance during entry, spin-eject orientation and aerodynamic stability during entry, structural integrity under atmospheric deceleration and impact loads, and tracking/recovery of this system. This initial probabilistic risk quantification demonstrates that, with the proper development program, a prototypical direct entry design can satisfy the containment assurance reliability requirement. Through the current Mars Sample Return Advanced Technology Development effort, an extensive design, analysis, and test program is presently proceeding with the aim of reducing the containment assurance risk of this system. This technology development effort, guided by a continuing PRA, focuses on key risk areas of a direct entry Earth return system including: the thermal protection system, impact dynamics, structural performance, aerodynamic stability, and ground recovery. This development program will culminate in a system validation flight test, 1-2 years prior to launch of the flight system. This flight test would include the launch, entry, and recovery of a full-scale Earth return system, as a scientific validation of the key risk elements to verify nominal design performance. The results of the initial PRA suggested several dominant failure sequences that can be validated in a flight test. These include: demonstrating the thermal protection system reliability and performance during entry, demonstrating the spin-eject orientation and aero-dynamic stability during entry, demonstrating the structural integrity under atmospheric deceleration and impact loads, and demonstrating tracking and recovery of the Earth return system. This single test will directly address over 50% of the total containment assurance risk elements. This presentation will begin by presenting the relative risk of various Earth return strategies. The results of the initial probabilistic risk assessment will be presented followed by a discussion of the development accomplishments and plans for demonstration of a highly reliable direct entry Earth return system.

Braun, R.↗

NASA NTRS2014

Comparative Analysis of Static and Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment

Implementation of risk-informed design allows the design team to thoroughly explore the risks of a system while iterating the operations concept, design, and requirements until the system meets mission objects and is achievable within constraints. To arrive at a space system design that is likely to meet all constraints placed upon mass, cost, performance and risk, the system requirements must be understood and traded against each other as early as the conceptual design phase. Depending on the project phase and the goals of the risk analysis, various PRA methodologies could be used to produce quantitative risk estimates to enable such a process. In order to better understand the applicability, advantages, and limitations of various PRA methodologies, a comparative analysis of three bottom-up, component-based PRA approaches was performed. The three methods examined are a traditional static fault tree, a fault tree hybrid, and a dynamic Monte Carlo simulation. Each approach was used to assess a generic reaction control system (RCS) thruster pod and mission. The methods are assessed in terms of the process of modeling a system, the actionable information produced for the design team, and the overall fidelity of the quantitative risk evaluation generated. The paper also discusses the applicability of each methodology to the different phases of system development.

Probablistic↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Proof-of-Concept for a Long-Term Health Metric to Quantify End of Mission Health Status in Astronauts

NASA has long used Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) when high-stakes decisions need to be made about complex systems. For spaceflight medical risk, the Human Research Program’s Medical Extensible Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment Tool (MEDPRAT) is a significant step towards robustly quantifying the risk to crew health during exploration missions. However, there remains a significant gap in the ability to comprehensively characterize and assess risk across the disparate functionalities and capabilities which comprise the entire Crew Health and Performance (CHP) system. To fill this gap, the Crew Health and Performance – Probabilistic Risk Assessment (CHP-PRA) project aims to perform risk characterization for the CHP system by assessing performance risk in addition to medical risk. This effort also includes quantifying Long-Term Health (LTH) risk in addition to in-mission risk outcomes within the CHP-PRA results. LTH risk encompasses the timeframe from immediately post-flight, through the rest of an astronaut’s career, through retirement, and until death. A proof-of-concept LTH risk metric is based on medical condition end-state, as defined by the Evidence Library, capturing the spaceflight specific medical impacts persisting into post-flight[1]. Condition outcomes in the Evidence Library progress through three Clinical Phases (CP): the diagnostic phase (CP1), the treatment/convalescent phase (CP2), and the end-state phase (CP3) which represents the detrimental effects of the condition after the crew member has recovered to the maximal extent. Each CP has an associated Task Impairment (TI), defined as the degree of crew incapacity due to experiencing the condition, and is quantified with a 0-1 range. Conditions with an associated CP3 (e.g. Sepsis, Traumatic Hypovolemic Shock, Sudden Cardiac Arrest, etc.) typically have serious consequences that can cause an astronaut to be fully or partially debilitated throughout the remainder of the mission. Consequently, the Cumulative CP3 TI End-of-Mission Health Status Metric is developed by CHP-PRA to quantify the cumulative effects of all conditions which progressed to the CP3 state throughout the entirety of the mission. Hence, this End-of-Mission Health Status Metric attempts to serve as an indicator of an astronaut’s health state at the time of landing. The severity of the lingering effects of in-mission medical events are dependent on mission activities and the level of available in-mission medical care. This allows the associated cumulative TI metric to be used in comparison with the crew’s end of mission health status for different levels of in-mission resources. This presentation provides the strategy for using CP3 as an LTH metric component, as well as a proof-of-concept demonstration of LTH risk characterization using this component.

long term health↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Investigating Risks Due to Artemis EVA Tempo Via Probabilistic Risk Assessment

Spaceflight operations pose unique challenges to crew health, safety, and resource management. As space agencies and private companies continue to push the boundaries of human exploration, it is essential to understand the risks associated with Extravehicular Activities (EVAs) and develop strategies to mitigate them. The tempo at which EVAs are conducted – the total number and frequency of these activities – can have a profound impact on medical risks, resource consumption, and overall mission success. Probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) provides a powerful framework for evaluating complex systems and identifying potential hazards. Our work employs the Medical Extensible Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment Tool (MEDPRAT) [1] to simulate mission events, occurrence and treatment of medical conditions, and track the utilization of resources. Coupled with the Evidence Library [2], a medical evidence base for exploration-class missions developed by the Exploration Medical Capability within NASA’s Human Research Program, we can estimate these risks with increased fidelity and optimize medical kit contents to meet specific mission requirements. This presentation provides a detailed examination of how EVA tempo influences medical risk estimates for a lunar surface design reference mission. A comprehensive analysis is conducted to assess the additional mass and volume burden imposed on medical kits required to maintain adequate levels of risk mitigation. Furthermore, we estimate the distribution of the number of successful EVAs completed based on the level of task impairment imposed by medical events and flight rules related to specific medical events, such as decompression sickness.

Modeling↗

NASA NTRS2010

Risk-Informed Safety Assurance and Probabilistic Assessment of Mission-Critical Software-Intensive Systems

This report validates and documents the detailed features and practical application of the framework for software intensive digital systems risk assessment and risk-informed safety assurance presented in the NASA PRA Procedures Guide for Managers and Practitioner. This framework, called herein the "Context-based Software Risk Model" (CSRM), enables the assessment of the contribution of software and software-intensive digital systems to overall system risk, in a manner which is entirely compatible and integrated with the format of a "standard" Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA), as currently documented and applied for NASA missions and applications. The CSRM also provides a risk-informed path and criteria for conducting organized and systematic digital system and software testing so that, within this risk-informed paradigm, the achievement of a quantitatively defined level of safety and mission success assurance may be targeted and demonstrated. The framework is based on the concept of context-dependent software risk scenarios and on the modeling of such scenarios via the use of traditional PRA techniques - i.e., event trees and fault trees - in combination with more advanced modeling devices such as the Dynamic Flowgraph Methodology (DFM) or other dynamic logic-modeling representations. The scenarios can be synthesized and quantified in a conditional logic and probabilistic formulation. The application of the CSRM method documented in this report refers to the MiniAERCam system designed and developed by the NASA Johnson Space Center.

Guarro, Sergio B.↗

NASA NTRS2014

Application of Fault Management Theory to the Quantitative Selection of a Launch Vehicle Abort Trigger Suite

The theory of System Health Management (SHM) and of its operational subset Fault Management (FM) states that FM is implemented as a "meta" control loop, known as an FM Control Loop (FMCL). The FMCL detects that all or part of a system is now failed, or in the future will fail (that is, cannot be controlled within acceptable limits to achieve its objectives), and takes a control action (a response) to return the system to a controllable state. In terms of control theory, the effectiveness of each FMCL is estimated based on its ability to correctly estimate the system state, and on the speed of its response to the current or impending failure effects. This paper describes how this theory has been successfully applied on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Space Launch System (SLS) Program to quantitatively estimate the effectiveness of proposed abort triggers so as to select the most effective suite to protect the astronauts from catastrophic failure of the SLS. The premise behind this process is to be able to quantitatively provide the value versus risk trade‐off for any given abort trigger, allowing decision makers to make more informed decisions. All current and planned crewed launch vehicles have some form of vehicle health management system integrated with an emergency launch abort system to ensure crew safety. While the design can vary, the underlying principle is the same: detect imminent catastrophic vehicle failure, initiate launch abort, and extract the crew to safety. Abort triggers are the detection mechanisms that identify that a catastrophic launch vehicle failure is occurring or is imminent and cause the initiation of a notification to the crew vehicle that the escape system must be activated. While ensuring that the abort triggers provide this function, designers must also ensure that the abort triggers do not signal that a catastrophic failure is imminent when in fact the launch vehicle can successfully achieve orbit. That is, the abort triggers must have low false negative rates to be sure that real crew‐threatening failures are detected, and also low false positive rates to ensure that the crew does not abort from non‐crew‐threatening launch vehicle behaviors. The analysis process described in this paper is a compilation of over six years of lessons learned and refinements from experiences developing abort triggers for NASA's Constellation Program (Ares I Project) and the SLS Program, as well as the simultaneous development of SHM/FM theory. The paper will describe the abort analysis concepts and process, developed in conjunction with SLS Safety and Mission Assurance (S&MA) to define a common set of mission phase, failure scenario, and Loss of Mission Environment (LOME) combinations upon which the SLS Loss of Mission (LOM) Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) models are built. This abort analysis also requires strong coordination with the Multi‐Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) and SLS Structures and Environments (STE) to formulate a series of abortability tables that encapsulate explosion dynamics over the ascent mission phase. The design and assessment of abort conditions and triggers to estimate their Loss of Crew (LOC) Benefits also requires in‐depth integration with other groups, including Avionics, Guidance, Navigation and Control(GN&C), the Crew Office, Mission Operations, and Ground Systems. The outputs of this analysis are a critical input to SLS S&MA's LOC PRA models. The process described here may well be the first full quantitative application of SHM/FM theory to the selection of a sensor suite for any aerospace system.

Lo, Yunnhon↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Development of A Crew Health and Performance System Probabilistic Risk Assessment Tool: Proof-of-Concept Approach

The crew health and performance (CHP) system represents the span of technological interventions and tested processes and procedures that in combination address the human risk to space flight. The Human Research Program (HRP) mental model of the CHP system breaks the capabilities needed to meet NASA human flight systems standards into specific categories (i.e., countermeasures, behavioral health, medical intervention). These categories are further broken down into specific sub-groups generally associated with the human system risks that these capabilities seek to mitigate. Like the approach used to develop the Integrated Medical Model (IMM) and the Medical Extensible Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Analysis Tool (MEDPRAT), HRP tasked NASA GRC’s Cross-Cutting Computational Modeling Project with developing a CHP probabilistic risk assessment tool, the CHP-PRA. The CHP-PRA model seeks to quantify and relatively assess the human risk state within the crew health and performance domain, using a combination of knowledge about human system risks and technology and practices likely to be applied during space flight missions. This modeling system will incorporate customer and stakeholder feedback and be flexible enough to address multiple different questions about important low-level mission-specific parameters. This presentation will introduce the initial concept and development timeline for this tool and demonstrate proof-of-concept through an application addressing a specific human risk question posed within the Artemis program.

Risk analysis↗

NASA NTRS2009

Probabilistic Risk Assessment for Decision Making During Spacecraft Operations

Decisions made during the operational phase of a space mission often have significant and immediate consequences. Without the explicit consideration of the risks involved and their representation in a solid model, it is very likely that these risks are not considered systematically in trade studies. Wrong decisions during the operational phase of a space mission can lead to immediate system failure whereas correct decisions can help recover the system even from faulty conditions. A problem of special interest is the determination of the system fault protection strategies upon the occurrence of faults within the system. Decisions regarding the fault protection strategy also heavily rely on a correct understanding of the state of the system and an integrated risk model that represents the various possible scenarios and their respective likelihoods. Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) modeling is applicable to the full lifecycle of a space mission project, from concept development to preliminary design, detailed design, development and operations. The benefits and utilities of the model, however, depend on the phase of the mission for which it is used. This is because of the difference in the key strategic decisions that support each mission phase. The focus of this paper is on describing the particular methods used for PRA modeling during the operational phase of a spacecraft by gleaning insight from recently conducted case studies on two operational Mars orbiters. During operations, the key decisions relate to the commands sent to the spacecraft for any kind of diagnostics, anomaly resolution, trajectory changes, or planning. Often, faults and failures occur in the parts of the spacecraft but are contained or mitigated before they can cause serious damage. The failure behavior of the system during operations provides valuable data for updating and adjusting the related PRA models that are built primarily based on historical failure data. The PRA models, in turn, provide insight into the effect of various faults or failures on the risk and failure drivers of the system and the likelihood of possible end case scenarios, thereby facilitating the decision making process during operations. This paper describes the process of adjusting PRA models based on observed spacecraft data, on one hand, and utilizing the models for insight into the future system behavior on the other hand. While PRA models are typically used as a decision aid during the design phase of a space mission, we advocate adjusting them based on the observed behavior of the spacecraft and utilizing them for decision support during the operations phase.

dynamic fault trees↗

NASA NTRS2006

Trade Studies of Space Launch Architectures using Modular Probabilistic Risk Analysis

A top-down risk assessment in the early phases of space exploration architecture development can provide understanding and intuition of the potential risks associated with new designs and technologies. In this approach, risk analysts draw from their past experience and the heritage of similar existing systems as a source for reliability data. This top-down approach captures the complex interactions of the risk driving parts of the integrated system without requiring detailed knowledge of the parts themselves, which is often unavailable in the early design stages. Traditional probabilistic risk analysis (PRA) technologies, however, suffer several drawbacks that limit their timely application to complex technology development programs. The most restrictive of these is a dependence on static planning scenarios, expressed through fault and event trees. Fault trees incorporating comprehensive mission scenarios are routinely constructed for complex space systems, and several commercial software products are available for evaluating fault statistics. These static representations cannot capture the dynamic behavior of system failures without substantial modification of the initial tree. Consequently, the development of dynamic models using fault tree analysis has been an active area of research in recent years. This paper discusses the implementation and demonstration of dynamic, modular scenario modeling for integration of subsystem fault evaluation modules using the Space Architecture Failure Evaluation (SAFE) tool. SAFE is a C++ code that was originally developed to support NASA s Space Launch Initiative. It provides a flexible framework for system architecture definition and trade studies. SAFE supports extensible modeling of dynamic, time-dependent risk drivers of the system and functions at the level of fidelity for which design and failure data exists. The approach is scalable, allowing inclusion of additional information as detailed data becomes available. The tool performs a Monte Carlo analysis to provide statistical estimates. Example results of an architecture system reliability study are summarized for an exploration system concept using heritage data from liquid-fueled expendable Saturn V/Apollo launch vehicles.

Mathias, Donovan L.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Future of Integrated Performance Modeling in the Crew Health and Performance – Probabilistic Risk Assessment Project

The NASA engineering community utilizes event-driven and fault-tree probabilistic techniques to classify risks in the space environment by taking advantage of the inherent knowledge of complex spaceflight system design and testing to quantify failure risk. In harmonizing the risk of human space flight, answering the question of ‘How do we balance health, performance and resource risks with other engineering risks on long duration space missions?’ remains a deeply challenging and largely qualitative practice. The Human Research Program’s Medical Extensible Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment Tool (MEDPRAT) was a significant step forward in efforts to robustly quantify the risk to crew health for exploration missions. However, there remains a significant gap in the ability to comprehensively assess and characterize risk across the disparate functionalities and capabilities which comprise the Crew Health and Performance (CHP) system. The Crew Health and Performance – Probabilistic Risk Assessment (CHP-PRA) project seeks to characterize CHP risks by expanding beyond the foundation established by its PRA predecessors like IMM and MEDPRAT, that simulate medical risk metrics like loss of crew life and evacuations. One of the new risk measures in the CHP-PRA system is embodied in our Performance Risk Model (PRisM). PRisM provides a novel way of assessing crew performance on mission tasks, using a generalized framework which relates back to NASA-STD-3001. This approach allows PRisM to capture and integrate data from a variety of different domains into a single, unified, reproducible representation of astronaut performance. In this presentation, we discuss the motivation for the CHP-PRA work and give a high level overview of the goals of the project, outline the forward work for PRisM, and discuss collaboration opportunities for the community who might explore if their domain knowledge and data could be represented, integrated, and quantified with these tools, whose outcomes are metrics useful for supporting operational mission planning and decision making.

Lauren McIntyre↗

NASA NTRS2020

MEDPRAT-SEL: Medical Resource Set Selector Searching High-Dimensionality Space

NASA Human Research Program's (HRP) next generation risk model closes the loop on medical risk and resource evaluation, providing researchers with a tool to assess and choose capabilities scientifically. The Medical Extensible Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment Tool (MEDPRAT) simulator (SIM) evaluates resources in terms of medical benefit, such as reduced crew quality time lost (QTL), vs. cost, in mass or volume. The MEDPRAT resource set selector (SEL) searches the space of resource benefits v. cost, closing a feedback loop around the simulator, thus selecting resource sets with best benefit for cost. We discuss the design and results of the resource set selector. NASA HRP's emphasis on scientific assessment of risk, PRA, has led to the Cross-cutting Computational Modeling Project (CCMP).

Leinweber, Lawrence↗

NASA NTRS2025

Assessment of Model Outcomes Between the Integrated Medical Model (IMM) and the Medical Extensible Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment Tool (MEDPRAT)

The Medical Extensible Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment Tool (MEDPRAT) is a computational model that provides human health and medical risk predictions for crewed spaceflight missions. MEDPRAT utilizes discrete event modeling and dynamic probabilistic simulation to predict critical mission outcomes (total medical events, crew health index, quality time lost, loss of crew life, removal to definitive care), condition occurrences, and resource consumption. Input parameters for MEDPRAT include crew attributes (e.g., sex), types of mission activities (e.g., whether and where crew members perform an extravehicular activity (EVA)), available resources, treatment information, and probability distributions for medical conditions. As an evolution of the Integrated Medical Model (IMM), MEDPRAT provides enhanced capabilities and higher fidelity, and incorporates more appropriate assumptions for long-duration spaceflight. IMM is the currently accepted standard for quantifying spaceflight mission medical risk in NASA operations that uses a probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) approach. MEDPRAT builds on the same logical foundation as IMM but implements the model architecture through highly optimized Monte Carlo sampling methods. An analysis is performed comparing the outputs from IMM with those from MEDPRAT V1.0 and V2.0 for the same reference missions in order to quantify similarities and differences in the model outcomes. The juxtaposition between IMM and MEDPRAT V1.0 and 2.0 shown in this report demonstrates that these two models generate very similar results; where differences in outcomes are shown, these are in accordance with the underlying assumptions and differences in the model architectures. This validation effort further establishes the credibility and reliability of the MEDPRAT software.

Matthew T Prelich↗

NASA NTRS2012

Improving Safety on the International Space Station: Transitioning to Electronic Emergency Procedure Books on the International Space Station

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) originally designed the International Space Station (ISS) to operate until 2015, but have extended operations until at least 2020. As part of this very dynamic Program, there is an effort underway to simplify the certification of Commercial ]of ]the ]Shelf (COTS) hardware. This change in paradigm allows the ISS Program to take advantage of technologically savvy and commercially available hardware, such as the iPad. The iPad, a line of tablet computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., was chosen to support this endeavor. The iPad is functional, portable, and could be easily accessed in an emergency situation. The iPad Electronic Flight Bag (EFB), currently approved for use in flight by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), is a fraction of the cost of a traditional Class 2 EFB. In addition, the iPad fs ability to use electronic aeronautical data in lieu of paper in route charts and approach plates can cut the annual cost of paper data in half for commercial airlines. ISS may be able to benefit from this type of trade since one of the most important factors considered is information management. Emergency procedures onboard the ISS are currently available to the crew in paper form. Updates to the emergency books can either be launched on an upcoming visiting vehicle such as a Russian Soyuz flight or printed using the onboard ISS printer. In both cases, it is costly to update hardcopy procedures. A new operations concept was proposed to allow for the use of a tablet system that would provide a flexible platform to support space station crew operations. The purpose of the system would be to provide the crew the ability to view and maintain operational data, such as emergency procedures while also allowing Mission Control Houston to update the procedures. The ISS Program is currently evaluating the safety risks associated with the use of iPads versus paper. Paper products can contribute to the flammability risk and require manual updates that take time away from research tasks. The ISS program has recently purchased three iPads for the astronauts and the certification has been approved. The crew is currently using the iPads onboard. The results of this analysis could be used to discern whether the iPad is a viable option for use in emergencies by assessing the risk posture through the development of a quantitative probabilistic risk assessment (PRA).

Carter-Journet, Katrina↗