Investigation of Occupant Injury Risk in the Soyuz Vehicle and Comparison to Commercial Crew Designs

Currently, United States (US) astronauts return to Earth aboard the Soyuz spacecraft. Recent evidence has shown that the occurrence of injuries in crewmembers landing in the Soyuz spacecraft is higher than predicted by current models. There are several possible explanations for this trend: the landing impacts are harder than predicted, current models do not accurately capture the true injury risk, spaceflight deconditioning decreases the crewmembers’ tolerance to impact, or some combination of the three. In addition, NASA and commercial companies are developing three new capsule-type spacecraft in which crewmembers will be subjected to a landing impact at the end of the mission. We need an accurate understanding of the mechanisms of landing impact injury to predict risk of crewmember injury in these vehicles.

To improve our understanding of Soyuz crewmember injury risk, as well as future crewmembers onboard the three new designs (Orion, SpaceX Dragon2, and Boeing CST-100), we propose a computational study whose key objectives are to assess the risk of injury to Soyuz crewmembers and compare the Soyuz occupant protection design to the three future vehicle designs. Using mid-size male finite element (FE) models of a human with varying levels of complexity, Soyuz landings will be simulated and responses from the model will be analyzed to assess injury risk. These injury risk predictions will be correlated with actual injury outcomes in crewmembers captured in the Human Research Program (HRP)-funded Soyuz Landing Injury Risk Characterization Study (Principal Investigator: Newby). Soyuz human FE injury risk predictions will also be compared to our previous human FE simulations of the three modern vehicle designs from the HRP-funded ATD (Anthropomorphic Test Dummy) Injury Metric Sensitivity and Extensibility Study (Principal Investigator: Somers; Co-Investigators: Stitzel, Gayzik, Weaver, Newby). This will greatly aid NASA to estimate crew injury risk as a design variable for future missions.

By assessing Soyuz landing impacts with a human FE model in flight-like conditions and comparing the Soyuz occupant protection design to other modern vehicle designs, this proposal directly addresses the Human Research Roadmap (HRR) Risk of Injury Due to Dynamic Loads and would provide additional evidence to characterize the risk as well as contribute to addressing three Occupant Protection gaps (OP-101: We do not understand the risk of injury associated with crewed vehicle landings and how this risk relates to the desired acceptable risk; OP-301: We do not have an identified, validated and standardized approach for vehicle instrumentation and biodynamic data collection, and predictive analytic biodynamic modeling that would allow for specific risk injury prediction by mission-phase, crew functionality post-landing, and vehicle design; and OP-401: We do not know the extent to which multiple spaceflight hazards (e.g., spaceflight deconditioning, bone loss, radiation exposure, altered gravity) may interact to synergistically decrease injury tolerance for off-nominal dynamic landing loads, increasing risk to crew’s performance in mission-completing actions immediately after landing.). The project will yield novel scientific knowledge on crewmember injury risk associated with landing events in the Soyuz, Orion, Dragon2, and CTS-100 vehicles. The work will also produce validated analytical tools including a Soyuz seat FE model with mid-size male human body FE models which can be used to verify occupant safety of crewmembers in impact conditions. By achieving the aims of the proposed work, the study will advance our overall understanding of crewmember injury risk due to dynamic loads encountered in spacecraft landings, and produce validated computational models which can be used to predict the associated occupant injury risk when the Soyuz and modern spacecraft vehicle designs are subjected to various dynamic loading events.

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