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Completed TRL 6 (started at 4, targeting 6)
Under the Health Sensor for Inflatable habitats Tipping Point (HSI-TP) project, Luna Innovations is partnering with Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), ILC Dover, and NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) to advance an innovative structural health monitoring system for inflatable space habitats that will benefit the Lunar Gateway, future Mars missions, and the commercial space industry. Structural health monitoring (SHM) of inflatable structures is critical for human safety, however accomplishing this goal is a challenging task. The two primary factors that can result in failures of the softgoods are creep of the Vectran webbings and micrometeoroid impacts. The flexible softgoods materials that comprise inflatable structures are not conducive to traditional methods of SHM and require a new approach. HSI-TP aims to advance the TRL of the most promising solution to inflatable SHM that directly addresses creep and micrometeoroid impacts through embedded sensors. The goal of this project is to ready the technology for integration in the Lunar Gateway and future Mars missions, fulfilling the purpose of the Tipping Point program.
Fiber optic strain sensors are minimally intrusive, lightweight, immune to electro-magnetic interference (EMI), and highly distributed (100’s of measurements via a single cable) - traits that are well suited to space launch and space habitation applications. This effort will demonstrate the use of fiber optic strain sensing cable embedded in the webbings of an inflatable habitat structure to measure lifecycle-related strain creep and strain data during an induced burst-failure of the structure. This technology would increase mission safety through the execution of full lifecycle structural health monitoring (SHM) of inflatable habitat structures, including restraint layer creep, impact damage, and structural system anomalies.
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