ISS as a testbed for advanced Health Management and Automation Technologies

Abstract

Achieving a sustainable exploration program requires development of a foundation of knowledge, validated technologies, and tools that support safe/reliable, affordable, effective, and flexible systems. Furthermore, the exploration program requires new paradigms in program execution and mission operations to meet both technical and budgetary challenges of space exploration missions. New technologies in a wide spectrum of applications must be developed, matured and implemented in spacecraft and mission operations, from vehicle subsystem components to health management and automation applications. In many of these areas, the performance of new technology can be examined and validated in laboratory settings, other ground facilities or un-manned space platforms. However, to develop, mature, and validate new technologies that enable new systems and mission management capabilities necessary to support long duration manned missions beyond LEO, highly relevant operational environments and data for manned spaceflight applications are necessary. Extensive interaction between state-of-the-art technology developers and the operations community is crucial for the successful evolution of relevant technology from development labs to on-board future space systems. New or existing platforms where relevant environments and data are available for this purpose, and where the developer-operator collaboration can occur, need to be identified and made available. The International Space Station (ISS) is one of the few platforms where abundant data of complex human-rated systems is available, both on-board the spacecraft and on the ground. Additionally, the extended-duration mission profile of ISS provides opportunities for the operations community, including on-board crew and flight control team (FCT), to evaluate and gain familiarity with new technologies and capabilities to execute mission operations, thus reducing the risk of implementation and maximizing the relevancy of the new applications. The ISS provides a unique, long-term on-orbit operations environment to mature and validate technologies that directly impact on-board vehicle/crew autonomy and mission operations. This paper provides an evaluation of using ISS as a platform to mature and validate new technologies in health management and automation, which directly impact future spacecraft systems and mission management. The evaluation includes a review of the following: current ISS on-board architecture and data, as well as ground facilities, such as Mission Control Center, training facilities and existing testbeds, to enable the platform functions candidate technologies in health management and automation to be evaluated, in the areas of integrated system health management, automated mission planning, automated command and procedure execution, and human computer interface.