SPACE LAB TECHNOLOGIES, LLC — National Aeronautics and Space Administration STTR Phase I: T10

Description

HEART (Habitat ECLSS Analytics for Resilience Tool) is an environmental health monitoring platform that addresses the need for autonomous technologies to manage space habitats. Spacecraft crew on deep space exploration missions will need to manage, plan, and execute a mission independently of mission control on Earth, because of communication time lags or outages. Due to complexity of spacecraft systems, operations management will be prohibitively time consuming and computationally intensive. Off-nominal events may occur that limit crew activity or capacity. Furthermore, space habitats like Lunar Gateway may operate without crew for weeks, months, or even years at a time, necessitating autonomous operations. When a space habitat is unoccupied, unexpected events may require immediate autonomous detection and response. HEART assesses ECLSS robustness in real time for autonomous habitat health management. It provides state estimation, model-based anomaly detection, prioritized anomaly reporting, and managed transitions to different operating modes (dormant, quiescent, and active) in space habitats like Lunar Gateway. The benefits of HEART over state-of-the-art ECLSS health management applications include improved situational awareness, model-based anomaly detection for dynamic systems, early degradation detection, risk assessment for prioritized reporting, state transition readiness, and adaptability. This Phase I project will show proof of concept for the enabling functions of HEART. In support of NASArsquo;s priorities for sustained human exploration of deep space the HEART concept will be a major step towards autonomous systems that enable spacecraft operation independent of Earth-based mission control. The design will be readily transferable to terrestrial applications, including management of any complex controlled environment supporting life forms, such as submarines, plant growth chambers, greenhouses, or even biomanufacturing facilities.