RxEVA: Prescribing Human Performance Exploration Limits for Surface Operations

Abstract

Future human space exploration missions will see crewmembers perform extravehicular activities (EVA) more frequently and with a higher degree of autonomy than ever before. This change requires new tools for mission planning to be developed that take the increased physical and mental stress associated with numerous EVAs into account. The Prescription (Rx) Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Project, or RxEVA, is an interdisciplinary approach with the goal of creating a human-centric model that will encourage safe, long duration, surface EVA operations. This model is hypothesized to allow mission planners to continually update the cadence and difficulty level of extravehicular crewmember's tasks by using biometric and environmental factors as feedback, thus creating individualized thresholds or EVA limits. RxEVA endeavors to output mission planning recommendations for subsequent operations that will prevent crew physical and/or mental overload (or burnout) and reduce potential injuries or compromised performance on EVA. The desired output of the RxEVA Project is the creation of a computer or tablet-based application that can be used primarily for long duration spaceflight, but can also be applied to terrestrial spinoffs involving human performance and personal health. This paper serves as a roadmap for the RxEVA project. First, it lays out the foundational knowledge and data sources that already exist that can be used to create the RxEVA model. Second, it highlights the gaps that the research needs to address with respect to the model itself and finally it discusses the next steps that need to be taken to fulfill the project goal.