MultiSense: a Multiplex Structural Health Monitoring System for Softgood Architectures'' Restraint Layer to Monitor Creep & Strain

Inflatable habitat structures are pivotal for future space exploration, offering increased livable space with reduced launch mass and costs. However, ensuring their long-term structural reliability, particularly against creep deformation and micrometeoroid impacts, is essential for the safety of space missions. Max Space addresses this challenge with MultiSense, an innovative structural health monitoring (SHM) system tailored for inflatable habitats. This system features embedded multiplex sensors, including Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG), piezoelectric materials, and Capacitive Strain Gauges (CSG), to provide real-time, accurate strain measurements and detect structural issues as they arise. Partnering with Thin Red Line Aerospace (TRLA), Max Space utilizes a unique braiding technique to incorporate these sensors into the habitat's cordage tendons, without integrating them during the braiding process. MultiSense is designed to endure initial deployment strains of 2 to 5% and sensitively detect creep strains from 0 to 0.5% in operational conditions. The research also considers cutting-edge materials like Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs), graphene, and spray-on superhydrophobic sensors, which could further advance SHM technology pending additional development. While MultiSense is specifically tailored for Max Space’s premier space expandable modules which utilize uni-directional softgood architecture, it is also poised to enhance the safety and reliability of other entities’ inflatable space systems that can adapt to their softgood design, such as basket-woven inflatables which ensures wide applicability in the market. The successful integration of MultiSense will enhance the monitoring and maintenance of inflatable habitats' structural integrity, aligning with NASA's objectives for secure and sustainable human spaceflight. This proposal promises to elevate confidence in inflatable habitats, facilitating their broader adoption for NASA's space exploration missions.

Max Space MultiSense addresses one of the key factor of having a “Smart” Inflatable particularly on structural monitoring to measure load in restrain layer, capture changes in load over time identify, and locate any highly loaded straps or stress concentrations outlined in Instrumentation Needs of Inflatable Space Structures 2019. MultiSense can be utilized not just in Max Space proprietary expandable architecture but also has the potential to integrate to the broader expandable habitat systems and exploration objectives. MultiSense aligns with NASA's efforts under the NextSTEP-2 program to develop habitat, tunnel, outpost, and airlock systems for the Lunar Orbital Platform – Gateway (LOP-G), as part of exploration architectures for future cislunar, lunar surface, and Mars missions. By obtaining multiple data measurements from one sensor system it enables comprehensive analysis and iteration through multiple data points, these sensor systems contribute to the refinement of habitat technologies, expediting their deployment for various space missions and environments, from low Earth orbit to lunar applications. Multisense also supports the Moon-to-Mars objective and strategy TH-4: Develop in-space and surface habitation system(s) for crew to live in deep space for extended durations, enabling future missions to Mars. MultiSense design can be adapted to a broader expandable habitat design accelerating the data gathering utilizing its multiplex design for better strain monitoring techniques, which will help in evaluating the performance of structural restraint layer materials and monitoring them during flight and operations. continue at exponential rates in the coming years. Additionally, it is estimated that the global space industry could generate revenue of more than $1 trillion or more by 2040. The total serviceable market size (SAM) for Max Space’s flexible, modular, and expandable structures for habitats is estimated at $20B by 2030 and $51B by 2040. Max Space is projecting a SOM of $1B (~5% of SAM in 2030), this includes structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. The Max Space MultiSense system represents a significant breakthrough in the monitoring and maintenance of inflatable space habitats. While initially crafted to meet the stringent needs of NASA's extraterrestrial endeavors, the system's multiplex strain sensor package, seamlessly integrated into the tendon design of our proprietary expandable module, has vast potential in a multitude of non-NASA commercial applications. In the burgeoning commercial aerospace industry, companies venturing into the development of space softgoods architecture such as Sierra Space, Lockheed Martin, and Axiom, among others, stand to benefit greatly from the MultiSense technology. Future space station design and other spacecraft could also benefit from this instrument, especially with the fast-growing technological advancement in space module technology. The system's ability to monitor the creep of the restraint layer in real-time offers a proactive tool for ensuring structural integrity and safety, which is paramount as private entities pursue orbital platforms, lunar bases, and even Martian habitats. Our CEO was the founding CEO of Made In Space during which the company performed the first in space manufacturing missions, and our CTO has built over 40 full-fidelity high pressure space inflatables, including several still in space today.

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