Mission Architecture Research Articles

Science Goals and Mission Architecture of the Europa Lander Mission Concept

Abstract Europa is a premier target for advancing both planetary science and astrobiology, as well as for opening a new window into the burgeoning field of comparative oceanography. The potentially habitable subsurface ocean of Europa may harbor life, and the globally young and comparatively thin ice shell of Europa may contain biosignatures that are readily accessible to a surface lander. Europa’s icy shell also offers the opportunity to study tectonics and geologic cycles across a range of mechanisms and compositions. Here we detail the goals and mission architecture of the Europa Lander mission concept, as developed from 2015 through 2020. The science was developed by the 2016 Europa Lander Science Definition Team (SDT), and the mission architecture was developed by the preproject engineering team, in close collaboration with the SDT. In 2017 and 2018, the mission concept passed its mission concept review and delta-mission concept review, respectively. Since that time, the preproject has been advancing the technologies, and developing the hardware and software, needed to retire risks associated with technology, science, cost, and schedule.

The case for a Themis asteroid family spacecraft mission

The last decade has highlighted the importance of icy asteroids as likely outer-solar-system planetesimals that brought organics and ices to the inner solar system. Better characterizing the relationship between these objects and other water-rich bodies throughout the solar system and their evolution as potential sources of organics has broad-ranging implications. Additionally, characterizing ice-rich bodies is important for understanding the evolution and diversity of Ocean Worlds. Observations and modeling have suggested that the Themis asteroid family likely represents the fragments of an icy protoplanet originally similar in size to (10) Hygeia (∼444 ​km), which was broken apart by a catastrophic collision and with (24) Themis possibly representing its core. While extensive observations have been made of the icy asteroid (1) Ceres, exploring the deep interior structure and processes is difficult when observing an intact planetary body. Thus, the many objects in the Themis family provide an opportunity to observe an interior cross-section of one of these protoplanetary objects. The Themis family contains a variety of members, including multiple Main Belt Comets (e.g., 133P/Elst-Pizarro) for which comet-like dust ejection (consistent with being driven by sublimation of volatile material) has been observed. In this paper, we present the science case for why the exploration of the Themis family is key to understanding icy objects in the solar system, and present three design-referenced mission architectures that would be plausible under the NASA Discovery mission cost cap that would address key science objectives pertaining to icy asteroids.

Design Considerations for an Earth–Mars Cycler Spacecraft Using the S1L1 Cycler

This paper discusses the design considerations for an Earth–Mars cycler spacecraft using the ballistic S1L1 cycler trajectory. The primary objective is to estimate the mass of a cycler spacecraft designed to transfer a crew of six from Earth to Mars on a nominal 154-day trajectory, with sufficient consumables and life-support capabilities to accommodate the crew on a 1032-day contingency mission, in case the transfer from the cycler to Mars is not possible. The paper develops the functional system requirements from the concept of operations and discusses the bottom-up mass and power estimates for the individual subsystems. The cycler spacecraft design includes system capabilities that are not needed for spacecraft designed for point-to-point interplanetary transfers, such as a 30-year design life and the capability to be robotically maintained, repaired, and replenished during an uncrewed Earth–Earth resupply loop. The resulting spacecraft design is similar in size, mass, and operational complexity to deep space transfer vehicles for point-to-point mission architectures. However, as a minimum number of two cyclers are needed for round-trip missions with acceptable duration, a cycler-based architecture is less suitable for initial Mars exploration than for a sustained, continuous Mars exploration campaign.

Mission Architecture Using the SpaceX Starship Vehicle to Enable a Sustained Human Presence on Mars.

A main goal of human space exploration is to develop humanity into a multi-planet species where civilization extends beyond planet Earth. Establishing a self-sustaining human presence on Mars is key to achieving this goal. In situ resource utilization (ISRU) on Mars is a critical component to enabling humans on Mars to both establish long-term outposts and become self-reliant. This article focuses on a mission architecture using the SpaceX Starship as cargo and crew vehicles for the journey to Mars. The first Starships flown to Mars will be uncrewed and will provide unprecedented opportunities to deliver ∼100 metric tons of cargo to the martian surface per mission and conduct robotic precursor work to enable a sustained and self-reliant human presence on Mars. We propose that the highest priority activities for early uncrewed Starships include pre-placement of supplies, developing infrastructure, testing of key technologies, and conducting resource prospecting to map and characterize water ice for future ISRU purposes.

Launcher size optimization for a crewed Mars mission

Several proposals exist for human Mars mission architectures. An important question to resolve is to determine the most appropriate size of the launcher to minimize the costs, without compromising with risks, efficiency and future developments. Strategic choices are proposed. A fundamental choice is the direct to surface option, one that greatly simplifies the architecture of the mission and avoids a complex and costly LEO assembly of a giant vehicle. The second is aerocapture for Mars orbit insertion. The third is the choice of the EDL systems with highest TRL in order to minimize the risks of the mission and at the same time to avoid possible cost overruns due to qualification issues. Minimization is achieved for a crew of three. It is shown that an LEO capacity of the order of 100–110 tonnes is sufficient to carry out a Mars mission using 5 heavy launchers. This result is of particular interest for the countries currently developing super heavy launchers with such capacity, like the Starship and SLS in the USA, Long March 9 in China and similar developments in Russia. If Europe were also interested in the design of a super heavy launcher, it is shown here that it could be based on Vulcain or Prometheus engines. As the mission is rather simple and optimized with high TRL, the mission could be affordable. A roadmap is also suggested with appropriate preparatory missions for a human Mars exploration program.

Autonomous fire-fighting with heterogeneous team of unmanned aerial vehicles

This paper addresses autonomous fire-fighting missions with a heterogeneous team of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). We use UAVs with different capabilities to extinguish cooper- atively fires on the ground and on facades of high-rise buildings. The former is done by deploying fireproof blankets, whereas a water-jet system is used to extinguish fires on building facades. First, we propose two novel mechanisms on board UAVs for fire extinction: a system to deploy a blanket on the ground automatically, and a device to shoot water at facade fires. Then, we describe our software architecture for cooperative multi-robot missions in outdoor and unstructured environments, where robustness and reliability play a key role. The system was particularly developed for the Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge (MBZIRC), where we achieved the best performance in the fire-fighting Challenge. However, the conceptual design of our extinguishing devices and our software architecture are more general and could be applied to other search and rescue situations. We present not only our results in the final stage of MBZIRC but also our simulations and field experiments throughout the months previous to the competition, during which we assessed our system and tuned its performance.

Evaluating the Cost of Pharmaceutical Purification for a Long-Duration Space Exploration Medical Foundry.

There are medical treatment vulnerabilities in longer-duration space missions present in the current International Space Station crew health care system with risks, arising from spaceflight-accelerated pharmaceutical degradation and resupply lag times. Bioregenerative life support systems may be a way to close this risk gap by leveraging in situ resource utilization (ISRU) to perform pharmaceutical synthesis and purification. Recent literature has begun to consider biological ISRU using microbes and plants as the basis for pharmaceutical life support technologies. However, there has not yet been a rigorous analysis of the processing and quality systems required to implement biologically produced pharmaceuticals for human medical treatment. In this work, we use the equivalent system mass (ESM) metric to evaluate pharmaceutical purification processing strategies for longer-duration space exploration missions. Monoclonal antibodies, representing a diverse therapeutic platform capable of treating multiple space-relevant disease states, were selected as the target products for this analysis. We investigate the ESM resource costs (mass, volume, power, cooling, and crew time) of an affinity-based capture step for monoclonal antibody purification as a test case within a manned Mars mission architecture. We compare six technologies (three biotic capture methods and three abiotic capture methods), optimize scheduling to minimize ESM for each technology, and perform scenario analysis to consider a range of input stream compositions and pharmaceutical demand. We also compare the base case ESM to scenarios of alternative mission configuration, equipment models, and technology reusability. Throughout the analyses, we identify key areas for development of pharmaceutical life support technology and improvement of the ESM framework for assessment of bioregenerative life support technologies.

Tiger: Concept Study for a New Frontiers Enceladus Habitability Mission

Abstract Data returned from the Cassini–Huygens mission have strengthened Enceladus, a small icy moon of Saturn, as an important target in the search for life in our solar system. Information gathered from Cassini to support this includes the presence of a subsurface liquid water ocean, vapor plumes and ice grains emanating from its south polar region, and the detection of essential elements and organic material that could potentially support life. However, several outstanding questions remain regarding the connectivity of plume material to the ocean and the composition of the complex organic material. Herein we introduce Tiger, a mission concept developed during the 2020 Planetary Science Summer School at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Tiger is a flyby mission that would help further constrain the habitability of Enceladus through two science objectives: (1) determine whether Enceladus’s volatile inventory undergoes synthesis of complex organic species that are evidence for a habitable ocean, and (2) determine whether Enceladus’s plume material is supplied directly from the ocean or if it interfaces with other reservoirs within the ice shell. To address the science goals in a total of eight flybys, Tiger would carry a four-instrument payload, including a mass spectrometer, a single-band ice-penetrating radar, an ultraviolet imaging spectrograph, and an imaging camera. We discuss Tiger's instrument and mission architecture, as well as the trades and challenges associated with a habitability-focused New Frontiers–class flyby mission to Enceladus.

Review: O'Neil Ford on Architecture

Review: <i>O'Neil Ford on Architecture</i>

Galaxy Evolution Probe

The Galaxy Evolution Probe (GEP) is a concept for a mid- and far-infrared space observatory to measure key properties of large samples of galaxies with large and unbiased surveys. GEP will attempt to achieve zodiacal light and Galactic dust emission photon background-limited observations by utilizing a 6 Kelvin, 2.0 meter primary mirror and sensitive arrays of kinetic inductance detectors. It will have two instrument modules: a 10 - 400 micron hyperspectral imager with spectral resolution R = 8 (GEP-I) and a 24 - 193 micron, R = 200 grating spectrometer (GEP-S). GEP-I surveys will identify star-forming galaxies via their thermal dust emission and simultaneously measure redshifts using polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon emission lines. Galaxy luminosities derived from star formation and nuclear supermassive black hole accretion will be measured for each source, enabling the cosmic star formation history to be measured to much greater precision than previously possible. Using optically thin far-infrared fine-structure lines, surveys with GEP-S will measure the growth of metallicity in the hearts of galaxies over cosmic time and extraplanar gas will be mapped in spiral galaxies in the local universe to investigate feedback processes. The science case and mission architecture designed to meet the science requirements are described, and the kinetic inductance detector and readout electronics state of the art and needed developments are described. This paper supersedes the GEP concept study report cited in it by providing new content, including: a summary of recent mid-infrared KID development, a discussion of microlens array fabrication for mid-infrared KIDs, and additional context for galaxy surveys. The reader interested in more technical details may want to consult the concept study report.

Lucy Mission to the Trojan Asteroids: Instrumentation and Encounter Concept of Operations

Abstract The Lucy Mission accomplishes its science during a series of five flyby encounters with seven Trojan asteroid targets. This mission architecture drives a concept of operations design that maximizes science return, provides redundancy in observations where possible, features autonomous fault protection, and utilizes onboard target tracking near closest approach. These design considerations reduce risk during the relatively short time-critical periods when science data is collected. The payload suite consists of a color camera and infrared imaging spectrometer, a high-resolution panchromatic imager, and a thermal infrared spectrometer. The mission design allows for concurrent observations of all instruments. Additionally, two spacecraft subsystems will also contribute to the science investigations: the Terminal Tracking Cameras will obtain wide field-of-view imaging near closest approach to determine the shape of each of the Trojan targets and the telecommunication subsystem will carry out Doppler tracking of the spacecraft to determine the mass of each of the Trojan targets.

Drag-based orbit phasing through attitude and articulation control

Modern small satellite constellations are demanding quick spacecraft commissioning and high duty cycle for their payload operations. In a conventional small satellite mission architecture, operations time is often split between different modes that require different spacecraft attitudes to achieve their goal. For example, drag-based orbit maneuvering can be used for creating relative separation between constellation members, and with spacecraft consisting of single rigid bodies, dedicated attitude manipulation is required to perform these operations. The attitudes that take advantage of the body asymmetries to modify the drag area are generally incompatible with the attitude maneuvering required for payload operations. At the constellation scale, these downtimes in the payload operation schedule can greatly reduce the overall capability of the system. By including deployable, articulating solar arrays in the design of small spacecraft, array pointing can be decoupled from the main payload pointing operations. With these pieces decoupled, payload operations can proceed uninterrupted while the articulating arrays enable power generation or drag-based orbit maneuvering. The focus of this paper is the demonstration of the articulating arrays as a means of enabling drag-based orbit phasing, while agile attitude maneuvering for payload operations proceeds concurrently. The dynamic equations of the multibody system are derived, and guidance, navigation, and control considerations for achieving decoupled attitude and articulation objectives are presented. Results are shown for attitude performance as well as for the orbit maneuvering performance achieved through array articulation.

Ariadne: A Space Program Planning Decision Support Tool for Strategic Planners

The methods and processes available for planning have historically been unable to provide decision-makers with objective, quantitative information from both the upper strategic levels and lower technical levels of the space program. Instead, decision-makers must turn to qualitative assessments, disconnected from any of the fundamental, technical details, where inconsistent comparisons and secondary effects often become the basis of decisions. This status quo leads to misinformed decisions that will have the largest impact on the overall future cost and schedule of a project or program. Similarly, the systems designers and specialists at the lower technical levels are disconnected from any guidance from the overarching goals of the program. Therefore, these technical efforts tend to be pursued and optimized in isolation from the space project or program as a whole. This disconnect can be parametrically corrected to better support the decision-makers at all levels of a space program. In pursuit of a solution, a prototype decision-support system, Ariadne, has been developed to integrate the top-level effects of goals and strategies with the primary technical details of the lower-level mission architectures and associated systems.

Faster Exo-Earth yield for HabEx and LUVOIR via extreme precision radial velocity prior knowledge

The HabEx and LUVOIR mission concepts reported science yields for mission scenarios in which the instruments must search for potentially habitable planets, determine their orbits, and, if worthwhile, invest the integration time for a spectral characterization. We evaluate the impact of prior knowledge of planet existence and orbital parameters on yield for four mission concept architectures: HabEx 4m telescope with hybrid starshade and coronagraph, HabEx 4m telescope with starshade only, HabEx 4m telescope with coronagraph only, and LUVOIR B 8m telescope with coronagraph only. We use perfect prior knowledge to establish an upper bound on yield and use partial prior knowledge from a potential future extreme precision radial velocity (EPRV) instrument with 3 cm / s sensitivity. We detail a modeling framework that performs dynamically responsive observation scheduling with realistic mission constraints. We evaluate exo-Earth yields against three metrics of spectral characterization for the four mission architectures and three levels of prior knowledge (none, partial, and perfect). The EPRV provided prior knowledge increases yields by ∼30 % and accelerates by a factor of 3 to 6 the time to achieve half of the yield of the mission. Prior knowledge makes all the mission architectures more nimble and powerful, and most especially starshade-based architectures. With prior knowledge, a small telescope with a starshade can achieve comparable yield to a larger telescope with a coronagraph.

Combined observables in different inter-satellite line-of-sight directions from simulated satellite gravity mission architectures for retrieving total water storage – regional case study: the Nile River Basin

Numerous studies for improving gravity field determination from future gravity missions beyond the GRACE/GRACE-FO missions have been proposed during the last decade. In this contribution, full-scale simulated observations of four satellite missions, namely Bender-, Cartwheel-, Helix- and Pendulum-type, in addition to GRACE-FO as a reference mission will be used to retrieve the total water storage over the Nile River Basin (NRB). The findings show a superiority of investigated configurations in retrieving the total water storage (TWS) w.r.t. the GRACE-FO mission. Moreover, the Bender-type provides improved global TWS recovery showing the least standard deviations (STD) of about 3.43cm in terms of equivalent water heights (EWH) (up to d/o 80). The Pendulum, Cartwheel and Helix missions provide STD of about 6.34cm, 8.35cm and 5.78cm in terms of EWH, respectively. In addition, the Bender-type provides improved local TWS recovery over the NRB without any distortion w.r.t. both the “simulated” and “real” GRACE-FO solutions.

Small Mars Mission Architecture Study

While the vast majority of ESA’s funding for Mars exploration in the 2020s is planned to be invested in ExoMars and Mars Sample Return, there is an interest to assess the possibility of implementing a small mission to Mars in parallel with, or soon after, the completion of the MSR programme. A study was undertaken in the Concurrent Design Facility at ESA ESTEC to assess low-cost mission architectures for small satellite missions to Mars. Given strict programmatic constraints, the focus of the study was on a low-cost (&lt;250MEuro Cost at Completion), short mission development schedule with a cost-driven spacecraft design and mission architecture. The study concluded that small, low-cost Mars missions are technically feasible for launch within the decade.

A Preliminary Impulsive Trajectory Design for (99942) Apophis Rendezvous Mission

In this study, a preliminary trajectory design is conducted for a conceptual spacecraft mission to a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) (99942) Apophis, which is expected to pass by Earth merely 32,000 km from the Earth’s surface in 2029. This close approach event will provide us with a unique opportunity to study changes induced in asteroids during close approaches to massive bodies, as well as the general properties of NEAs. The conceptual mission is set to arrive at and rendezvous with Apophis in 2028 for an advanced study of the asteroid, and some near-optimal (in terms of fuel consumption) trajectories under this mission architecture are to be investigated using a global optimization algorithm called monotonic basin hopping. It is shown that trajectories with a single swing-by from Venus or Earth, or even simpler ones without gravity assist, are the most feasible. In addition, launch opportunities in 2029 yield another possible strategy of leaving Earth around the 2029 close approach event and simply following the asteroid thereafter, which may be an alternative fuel-efficient option that can be adopted if advanced studies of Apophis are not required.

Multidisciplinary Design and Architecture Optimization of a Reusable Lunar Lander

With renewed interest in lunar exploration and the upcoming deployment of the lunar space station, the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G), a scientific community, is focusing on the design of a lander to bring people back to the lunar surface. This work focuses on optimizing two aspects of the lunar lander concurrently: the mission architecture and the vehicle design, often treated independently in the literature. A methodology is introduced to enumerate and preliminarily rank all possible mission architectures. The best mission architectures are then coupled with a multidisciplinary design optimization process by modeling the various components of the spacecraft and optimizing over a set of design parameters. The need for fast computational models, particularly in trajectory optimization, resulted in an analytical approximation of gravitational losses. This work resulted in a hierarchy of mission architectures that are ranked according to the average mass necessary to perform the mission. This work is intended to help a system engineer designing a lunar lander in choosing the best number of vehicles, the number of reuses, and the mission profile for his/her mission requirements.

Multiprobe Mission Architecture Options for a Uranus Flagship Mission

In situ atmospheric measurements are a high priority for any future Flagship mission to the Ice Giants; however, most current mission concepts only include a single atmospheric entry probe in their designs. To maximize science returns and provide redundancy at a marginal cost, different mission architecture options are explored to deliver multiple atmospheric probes to Uranus. A methodology is developed for the consistent and generalized design of each architecture, integrating interplanetary trajectories, science orbits, probe entry and descent trajectories, telecommunication and data transfer performances, and to a certain extent, risks. A baseline single-probe mission is first designed using this methodology. Then, different architecture options to add a small secondary probe to this baseline mission are explored one by one and compared with each other and the original baseline mission. During the design of these different architectures, it is found that operational conflicts and data transmission capabilities are key drivers for the mission design and render some configurations infeasible. Comparisons are then made on the impact to the baseline single-probe mission, and it is determined that an additional 30 kg probe can be delivered to Uranus for a total mass penalty of under 100 kg. The dependence of probe mission design on the selection of interplanetary trajectory is also explored and is shown to have a significant impact on the design of the mission and its potential for success.

Bridging Joint Operations and Engineering Management through an Operational Mission Architecture Framework

The paper presents an organizing framework for directly incorporating United States Department of Defense (DoD) joint operational concepts into early-stage engineering management and system design. It translates operational level guidance from DoD Joint Publications to a concise Operational Mission Architecture Framework (OMAF) that can be used as a starting point for engineering management efforts. The OMAF is used to orient the development of systems architecture products per Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) standards. Resultantly, the OMAF serves as a bridging mechanism between the language and terminology employed in the joint operational community and the engineering management community.