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Presentations in this session include: (1) External Tank (ET) Materials, Manufacturing, and Operational Challenges; (2) Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) Materials, Manufacturing, and Operational Challenges,(3) Reusable Solid Rocket Motor (RSRM) Materials, Manufacturing, and Operational Challenges and (4) Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) Materials, Manufacturing, and Operational Challenges.
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a complex spacecraft designed to conduct leading edge scientific observations over a planned fifteen year mission lifetime. It was designed for servicing by the Space Shuttle to upgrade systems, replace failed components, and boost into a higher orbit. There are many operational challenges that must be addressed in preparing for and executing a Servicing Mission (SM) which range from both technical to managerial issues. This paper will be exploring the operational challenges faced by the HST Operations and Ground System Project in supporting the First Servicing Mission (FSM) and future Servicing Missions. We give special emphasis to those areas that helped ensure mission success. These areas include training, testing, and contingency planning.
This presentation focuses on the operational challenges associated with the X-59 and F-15 aircraft life support systems.
On April 19, 2008 the crew of Expedition 16 left the International Space Station and returned to earth via their Soyuz TMA-11 capsule after 192 days on orbit. Their capsule experienced the second consecutive and third ballistic reentry in the last 10 TMA recoveries and landed approximately 260 miles (420 km) from the prime landing site. Issues: The purpose of this presentation will be to describe, not only the typical medical operational challenges faced by Flight Surgeons recovering a long duration crew from space, but also address the unique challenges that existed with the Expedition 16 landing and crew recovery. Nominal Soyuz recovery challenges include remote recovery sites with crew exposures to sleep shifting and fatigue, dehydration, hypothermia and hyperthermia, and rotational, sustained, and impact g-forces. These environmental factors coupled with the patho-physiologic neuro-vestibular and orthostatic intolerance changes that occur secondary to the crews reintroduction into the earth s gravity field will be detailed. Additional challenges that were unique to this expedition included a ballistic reentry with higher g-loads, the presence of fire outside of the capsule on landing, a contingency medical event of a ground support personnel, and loss of communications with the crew just prior to landing and during recovery operations. Conclusions: In spite of these unique challenges the Russian Search and Rescue Forces and Medical Support personnel along with U.S. Medical Support performed well together. Possible improvements in training and coordination will be discussed.
The paper addresses the challenges inherent in establishing an outpost on the planet Mars. For background purposes, the unique, remote Martian environment and the developmental phases of a settlement in such an environment are discussed. Challenges are identified in terms of surface systems and operations. Due to its importance to habitability, the life support system (LSS) is highlighted with various options identified. Operations for the Mars outpost, earth-based and local, are characterized by a decentralized concept. The challenge of integrating logistics analysis early in system design and operations strategy is also addressed. In order to understand and reduce the system and operations challenges, the application of terrestrial and lunar testbeds is explained.
Equations of motion and dynamic influence of drag. Operational uses and challenges of atmospheric drag models.
Operators of a constellation of CubeSats have to confront a number of daunting challenges that can be cost prohibitive, or operationally prohibitive, to missions that could otherwise be enabled by a satellite constellation. Challenges including operations complexity, intersatellite communication, intersatellite navigation, and time sharing tasks between satellites are all complicated by operating with the usual CubeSat size, power, and budget constraints. EDSN pioneers innovative solutions to these problems as they are presented on the nano-scale satellite platform.
This abstract is submitted as part of the USSPACECOM Command Surgeon’s panel demonstrating the medical capabilities and challenges involved in human space flight support operations. BACKGROUND: NASA embarked on the Commercial Crew Program to launch astronauts into low-earth orbit from US soil and dock with the International Space Station (ISS). The eventual industry providers selected were SpaceX (SpX) and Boeing. These commercial transportation systems are vital to ensure crew availability on ISS for research and discovery. OVERVIEW: NASA/SpaceX Demo-2 (DM2) mission launched from the Kennedy Space Center in 2020 as the historic first crewed test-flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft with two NASA Astronauts onboard. DM2 represented the first flight in 9-years from US soil since STS-135 in 2011. The 63-day mission ended with splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, the first US water recovery in 45-years since Apollo-Soyuz. Validation of system hardware and operations allowed four-person crews to launch on subsequently missions (Crew-1, Crew-2, Crew-3, Crew-4, Crew-5 to date), which included International Partner crewmembers. DISCUSSION: A multitude of operational, training, medical, and technical issues needed to be addressed between NASA Medical Operations, the commercial provider SpaceX, and the Department of Defense. These included Flight rule development, occupant protection, pressurized suit testing, communication plans during mission phases, and emergency simulations for supporting Flight Surgeons and Biomedical Engineers. In providing crew experience with expected launch and entry G-force profile, Centrifuge training was established. Preventive health measures via the Health Stabilization Program were especially vital during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Unique aspects arise for SpX Dragon parachute splashdown and shipboard recovery operations in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. The new Commercial Crew Program is indeed a wonderfully challenging and exciting era for human spaceflight.
The Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III on the International Space Station (SAGE III/ISS) was delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) on 23 February 2017. The SAGE III/ISS payload was robotically installed external to the ISS and began acquiring science measurements on 17 March 2017. The SAGE III/ISS instrument retrieves vertical profiles of atmospheric ozone, multi-wavelength aerosol extinctions, and other gaseous species. This paper will focus on the improvements made to the operations of the SAGE III/ISS payload. A key focus of the operations team following commissioning was to create robust tools that aid in the operations of the payload. A close collaboration with the SAGE III/ISS ground systems team allowed for the development of web-based tools to continuously monitor the health of the payload. The mission operations team also worked with the SAGE III/ISS science team to gain a better sense of how the instrument works to maximize the quality and quantity of the science data collected. Another unique aspect of the SAGE III/ISS payload, that will be discussed, is the challenges of operating a hosted payload on the ISS; an active platform that has frequent attitude maneuvers, dockings, and EVAs. This active environment increases the need for the SAGE III/ISS operations team command to the payload. Through coordination and teamwork, SAGE III/ISS mission has developed an operations team, tool, and procedures that have successfully managed the payload around ISS activities and recovered from multiple instrument upsets. This has led the SAGE III/ISS payload to successfully surpass the acquisition metrics set forth prior to launch, allowing for the continued contribution to studying the atmospheric composition of the stratosphere and how it plays a role in Earth’s climate.
This paper describes how the Mars ScienceLaboratory (MSL) project prepared for and successfully beganCuriosity rover Mars operations from their homes in responseto the COVID-19 work-from-home orders. In a very shortperiod, the team developed procedures and executed a remoteoperations readiness test in parallel with the team's support fornominal operations. Continuing regular rover operations withan entirely remote team had not previously been consideredfeasible due to a variety of factors. These included both thehuman factors, such as multiple concurrent person-to-personinteractions of the uplink planning team, as well as technicalfactors, such as reliance on powerful workstations dedicated tographically intensive software tools used for planning. The testwas conducted on March 12th, with both the downlink anduplink teams successfully simulating a near full planning day.The JPL administration announced the transition to mandatorytelework on Monday, March 16th. MSL stood down the uplinkplanning originally scheduled for the next day while downlinkcontinued monitoring the rover. Full operations then resumedper schedule with nearly the entire operations team teleworkingon Friday, March 20th, during which the team planned roveractivities for three Martian days (sols). These activities includedthe successful drilling of the "Edinburgh" rock target, a highlycomplex contact science activity.As of October 1st, 2020, the Mars Science Laboratory missionoperations team has conducted 88 remote tactical uplink shiftsfor a total of 190 sols of planned rover activity, which accountsfor more than 6% of the mission to date. In this period the roverhas completed four drilling campaigns and driven over 1150meters towards its next major science target – a sulfate bearinggeologic unit at the foot of Mount Sharp. Success has not beenwithout its challenges. Many of these have been addressed whileothers will remain in some form until the team can safely returnto JPL, which in turn is the largest challenge for the future.
The international space community has begun to recognize that the established model for management of communications with spacecraft - commanded data transmission over individual pair-wise contacts - is operationally unwieldy and will not scale in support of increasingly complex and sophisticated missions such as NASA's Constellation project. Accordingly, the international Inter-Agency Operations Advisory Group (IOAG) ichartered a Space Internetworking Strategy Group (SISG), which released its initial recommendations in a November 2008 report. The report includes a recommendation that the space flight community adopt Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) to address the problem of interoperability and communication scaling, especially in mission environments where there are multiple spacecraft operating in concert. This paper explores some of the issues that must be addressed in implementing, deploying, and operating DTN as part of a multi-mission, multi-agency space internetwork as well as benefits and future operational scenarios afforded by DTN-based space internetworking.
The transition of space weather models or of information derived from space weather models to space weather forecasting is the last step of the chain from model development to model deployment in forecasting operations. As such, it is an extremely important element of the quest to increase our national capability to forecast and mitigate space weather hazards. It involves establishing customer requirements, and analyses of available models, which are, in principle, capable of delivering the required product. Models will have to be verified and validated prior to a selection of the best performing model. Further considerations include operational hardware, and the availability of data streams to drive the model. The final steps include the education of forecasters, and the implementation on gateway hardware prior to operational use. This presentation will provide a discussion of opportunities for rapid progress from the viewpoint of the Community Coordinated Modeling Center.
This paper discusses the Space Station assembly sequence planning and development process. It presents the planning methodologies from both historial and current perspectives. It is shown that planning the assembly sequence is a new and unique challenge and its solution requires the simultaneous satisfaction of many diverse variables and constants. The considerations which influence the development of the assembly sequence include launch vehicle integration and lift capabilities, on-orbit assembly flight operations, vehicle flight dynamics, spacecraft system capabilities and resource availability. Many of these considerations are described in this paper. In addition, the examples presented demonstrate the current process for assembly sequence planning and show many of the complex trade-offs that must be performed.
BACKGROUND: NASA embarked on the Commercial Crew Program to launch astronauts into low-earth orbit from US soil and dock with the International Space Station (ISS). The eventual industry providers selected were SpaceX (SpX) and Boeing. These commercial transportation systems are vital to ensure crew availability on ISS for research and discovery. OVERVIEW: NASA/SpaceX Demo-2 (DM2) mission launched from the Kennedy Space Center in 2020 as the historic first crewed test-flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft with two NASA Astronauts onboard. DM2 represented the first flight in 9-years from US soil since STS-135 in 2011. The 63-day mission ended with splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, the first US water recovery in 45-years since Apollo-Soyuz. Validation of system hardware and operations allowed four-person crews to launch on subsequently missions (Crew-1, Crew-2, Crew-3, Crew-4, Crew-5 to date), which included International Partner crewmembers. DISCUSSION: A multitude of operational, training, medical, and technical issues needed to be addressed between NASA Medical Operations, the commercial provider SpaceX, and the Department of Defense. These included Flight rule development, occupant protection, pressurized suit testing, communication plans during mission phases, and emergency simulations for supporting Flight Surgeons and Biomedical Engineers. In providing crew experience with expected launch and entry G-force profile, Centrifuge training was established. Preventive health measures via the Health Stabilization Program were especially vital during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Unique aspects arise for SpX Dragon parachute splashdown and shipboard recovery operations in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. The new Commercial Crew Program is indeed a wonderfully challenging and exciting era for human spaceflight.
The Magellan radar mission to Venus was launched in May 1989 and placed into orbit around Venus in August 1990. After several weeks of check-out including two complete signal loss events from the spacecraft, the mission began collecting data from the radar instrument in the three modes of synthetic aperture, altimetry, and passive radiometry. The author presents an overview of the mission and shows some results, concentrating on the engineering aspects of the results. He also describes how the many challenges were overcome and the system was adapted to the realities of Venus and the radar system that is being used to map the planet. It is concluded that this mission has presented many lessons learned about not only the design of an imaging and altimetric radar system but also the adaptation of this design to the mission operational constraints.
The conclusions and recommendations that resulted from NASA's Hunting Sacred Cows Workshop are summarized, where a sacred cow is a belief or assumption that is so well established that it appears to be unreasonably immune to criticism. A link was identified between increased complexity and increased costs, especially in relation to automation and autonomy. An identical link was identified for outsourcing and commercialization. The work of NASA's Cost Less team is reviewed. The following conclusions were stated by the Cost Less team and considered at the workshop: the way Nasa conducts business must change; NASA makes its best contributions to the public areas not addressed by other government organizations; the management tool used for the last 30 years is no longer suitable; the most important work on any program or project is carried out before the development or operations stages; automation should only be used to achieve autonomy if the reasons for automation are well understood, and NASA's most critical resources are its personnel.
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