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Completed TRL 4 (started at 2, targeting 6)
Development of Crew Health and Performance Spacesuit Physiology & Performance capabilities that are enabling for surface Extravehicular Activities (EVA)s on the moon and Mars requires ground-based test environments that physically and cognitively simulate the relevant aspects of EVA scenarios with sufficient fidelity to provide meaningful assessment of prototype technologies and conops. For example, development and testing of decision support algorithms that will aid a crewmember in modulating their physical workload to prevent overexertion and hypercapnia – both of which affect cognitive performance – requires an environment that approximates both the physical and cognitive demands of EVA as well as operationally relevant methods by which to quantify performance. Current planetary EVA simulation capabilities are costly and often preclude frequent testing.
The EVA Simulation Development project includes development of an affordable and repeatable crew health and performance EVA simulation environment that can physically and cognitively simulate the relevant aspects of EVA scenarios to provide meaningful assessments of prototype technologies and capabilities and iterative development testing. The Assessments of Physiology and Cognition in Hybrid-reality (APACHE) facility will utilize a lunar regolith simulant in combination with physical, virtual, or hybrid reality simulations to provide an affordable, repeatable, and readily available environment for crew health and performance EVA testing and technology development. In addition, a low cost, modular, unpressurized spacesuit workload simulator, the Hybrid Spacesuit Simulator (HS3), will be developed for use in integrated testing environments where higher fidelity spacesuits are unavailable or unnecessary for testing objectives.
The EVA Simulation Development facility and capabilities will incorporate the full Physical and Cognitive Exploration Simulations (PACES) methodology and complement of surface EVA scenarios, tasks, procedures, sensors, information systems, displays, interfaces, and metrics to enable testing necessary to close Crew Health and Performance Capability gaps related to surface EVA.
This work will provide a testing environment as well as standardized testing procedures and methods to support development of ground-based and in-flight Extravehicular Activity (EVA) biomedical decision support technologies to enable EVA crew health and performance monitoring and decision making during increasingly Earth-independent operations.
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