Human Spaceflight

Beginning in 1947, with the first waves of UFO sightings, and continuing in the subsequent decades, debates on the existence and gestalt of extraterrestrial life gained unprecedented prominence. Initially an American phenomenon, flying saucer reports quickly became global in scope. Contemporaneous with efforts to legitimize the possibility of spaceflight in the years before Sputnik, the UFO phenomenon generated as much sensation in Europe as in the USA. In the public imagination, UFOs were frequently conflated with technoscientific approaches to space exploration. As innumerable reports of sightings led to a transnational movement driven by both proponents and critics, controversial protagonists such as ‘contactee’ George Adamski became prominent media celebrities. Incipient space experts including Willy Ley, Arthur C. Clarke, and Wernher von Braun sought to debunk what they considered a great swindle, or, following C.G. Jung, a modern myth evolving in real-time. Yet they failed to develop a response to the epistemic-ontological challenge posed by one wave of UFO sightings after another. Studying a phenomenon whose very existence has been non-consensual since its genesis presents a particular challenge for historians. Posing complex questions of fact and fiction, knowing and believing, and science and religion, this article analyzes the postwar UFO phenomenon as part of a broader astroculture and identifies transcendental and occult traditions within imagined encounters with extraterrestrial beings.

With 50 million kilometers and a 20-minute communication delay separating Mars explorers from Earth’s resources and support, human missions to the red planet will be characterized by an unprecedented amount of autonomy and independence. In order to alleviate the logistics within Mars orbit, the SICSA team at the University of Houston is proposing a unique design for a permanently crewed base on the surface of Phobos. The baseline for a design approach was driven by analysis of habitability requirements, Phobos environmental conditions and capabilities of known launch systems. Those drivers called for researching and evaluating emerging technologies and their applicability to mission goals and objectives. Design concepts are evaluated for their safety provisions, emergency response strategies, and evolutionary growth potentials. After evaluations’ analysis, trade studies findings are incorporated into the final concept development .
The team chose crew safety, health maintenance and operational sustainability for making critical design decisions. Trade studies reviewed zero-gravity countermeasures options, location and deployment sequence on Phobos surface, primary power sources, primary habitat structure choices, and support trusses configurations and materials. Special considerations are given to logistical re-supply missions from Earth and contingency plans that are critical for continues mission success but constrained by limitations posed by 26-month Earth-Mars synodic cycle . This design is therefore a proposal based on actual knowledge to establish a sustainable human presence in outer-space in order to facilitate human exploration of Mars and beyond.

Human spaceflight presents new challenges for traditional approaches to risk assessment. From the onset human, spaceflight has been recognized as an inherently dangerous activity. Consequently, U.S. laws and regulations have grown in tandem with space launch activities and operations to protect public health and safety. The recent development of the commercial space transportation industry is now seeing the burden of risk shift from government and government-sponsored missions to private commercial entities and individuals, and yet ethical frameworks are lacking for the private space sector. Opening access to space to the public inherently raises novel concerns for increased risk awareness, communication, and management among commercial entities and voluntary participants. This also highlights the need for evaluating and clarifying social perspectives on issues of risk, uncertainty, and standardization. This article offers a multidisciplinary analysis in ethics, law, and business organization to support responsible decision-making and risk assessment for commercial spaceflight activities.

Ubiquitous, limitless and ever-expanding as it may be, outer space has a history too. Although it is virtually impossible to experience outer space in a direct, unmediated manner, historians can study how it was represented, communicated and perceived. In addition to presenting the core questions that drive the Imagining Outer Space volume this chapter introduces the umbrella concept of ‘astroculture,’ discusses the necessity to ‘Europeanize’ space history and suggests to regard ‘science fiction’ and ‘science fact’ as complementary rather than contradictory. The article also draws attention to two further characteristics of twentieth-century astroculture, that is its futuristic, often explicitly utopian strand as well as a strong transcendental, if not outspokenly religious undercurrent.

Winner of the 2017 Sacknoff Prize for Space History from the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) Aerospace Special Interest Group (Albatross) and Quest: The History of Spaceflight: https://www.spacehistory101.com/Sacknoff_Prize_for_Space_History_s/1824.htm

Since the earliest days of spaceflight, a range of actors—philosophers, scientists, engineers, lawyers, politicians, and “the rest of us”—have connected the view of Earth from outer space, often called the “world picture,” with “thinking globally.”  In doing so, these actors have related space activities to new kinds of political and existential meaning. Historical, anthropological, and sociological studies of these perspectives usefully deconstruct the influence of colonialism, politics, social order, and culture on the world picture, suggesting that its so-called global thinking is not so global after all.  Notably, Benjamin Lazier (2011) and Jordan Bimm (2014) historicize views about observing Earth from outer space, mainly as intellectual, politicized developments among philosophers and early spacefarers.  In Lazier’s account, the world picture is flat, not merely a philosophical but an actual “enframing”—literally, a picture of Earth from space.  But for astronauts and the engineers who design their vessels, the view of Earth from outer space occurs not within a two-dimensional frame but a physical space, which I tentatively call a “world space.” This approach inverts the object of study in discourses on the world picture from the impersonal “Whole Earth” to the space in which actors encounter it. I ask: How do the historical contingencies and sociological networks of spacecraft design influence astronaut experiences of viewing Earth from outer space and their “global thinking” or lack thereof?

I offer an historical and a sociological account of design, architecture, and bodies in one of the most unique sites of the International Space Station (ISS), the Cupola, often referred to as “our window on the world.”  I argue that the Cupola and ISS are what Michel Foucault would call “heterotopias.”  This concept presents a politically-charged, unorthodox lens through which to study such spaces. The heterotopia enriches scholarship on the world picture, providing a language by which to highlight flows of power in the Cupola and ISS. First, I review and critique studies on space, place, outer space, and thinking globally, using the heterotopia to intervene in these discourses. I then reveal various kinds of heterotopias related to life in the Cupola that highlight control and resistance to it. I show that the Cupola was designed and operates to order life and technological practices within and beyond its space, but that it also induces experiences that contest this spatial order. Although the Cupola may not create a “sense of place,” as Lazier might suggest and as Lisa Messeri claims of planetary scientists’ encounters with other worlds , it partly rejects its own spatial order by eroding astronauts’ global thinking and subverting its function as a technology that disciplines astronaut life.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I would like to express the utmost gratitude to Richard Staley for his invaluable and continuing insights and guidance during and after the writing of my M.Phil. Dissertation at Cambridge, from which this article is adapted. I must also thank Charissa Varma, Marwa Elshakry, Peter Dickens, Jordan Bimm, and Jeremy Kessler for their generous feedback and for various discussions that stimulated the development of the piece. I am further indebted to Mary Brazelton, Josh Nall, Simon Schaffer, Asif Siddiqi, Matthew Hersch, and Eleni Panagiotarakou for conversations on and offline that extended the reach of my research.

After the Apollo moon landings, disillusionment set in. With the return of the last astronaut in 1972, the skies – rather than the distant stars – once again became the limit. No longer considered the inevitable destination of infinite human expansion, outer space lost much of the popular appeal, cultural significance and political urgency that it had gained since the end of the Second World War. With the rapid waning of the worldwide Apollo frenzy, the optimism of the Space Age gave way to an era of planetized limits and space fatigue. Bringing together the history of European astroculture and American-Soviet spaceflight with recent scholarship on the 'long 1970s,' the thirteen chapters in this cutting-edge volume examine this period of transition and reconfiguration from a multiplicity of disciplinary perspectives. Rather than invoking oft-repeated narratives of a bipolar Cold War rivalry and an escalating Space Race, Limiting Outer Space breaks fascinating new ground by exploring a hitherto underrated and understudied decade, the Post-Apollo period.

How has European astrofuturism developed into a central element of Western modernity? Focusing on the activities of the early spaceflight movement, in particular key protagonists Willy Ley (1906-1969) and Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), this article analzyes the making of a cosmopolitan space international before and after the Second World War. While transnational networks of small amateur groups were well established in the 1930s, it was only in the 1950s that the authority of the space expert was publically acknowledged, laying the foundation of the 'rocket scientist'-myth in popular culture. To increase societal acceptability activists had undergone a self-imposed process of intellectual streamlining. However, that their success in writing fiction out of science had come at a price became obvious when they proved unable to respond to the epistemological challenge presented by the first waves of UFO sightings. Such questions of agency deserve a much more radical and comprehensive treatment than they have hitherto received if the societal impact of outer space is to be adequately historicized and integrated into mainstream cultural historiography.


Personae des Weltraums: Kosmopolitische Netzwerke peripheren Wissens, 1927–1957

Wie hat sich der europäische Astrofuturismus zu einem Kernelement westlicher Modernität entwickelt? Anhand der Aktivitäten zweier Protagonisten der frühen Raumfahrt-Bewegung, Willy Ley (1906–1969) und Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008), zeichnet der Aufsatz die Genese einer kosmopolitischen Internationale des Weltraums vor und nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg nach. Während transnationale Netzwerke kleinerer Amateurgruppen bereits in den 1930er Jahren existierten, wurde die Autorität des Weltraum-Experten von einer breiteren Öffentlichkeit erst in den 1950er Jahren anerkannt und zugleich die Grundlage des ‹Raketenwissenschaftler-Mythos› in der Populärkultur geschaffen. Indem sie zur Überwindung ihres soziokulturellen Außenseiterstatus ‹fiction› aus ‹science› herauszuschreiben suchten, unterzogen sich diese Experten erfolgreich einem Prozess intellektueller Selbstbeschränkung, erwiesen sich jedoch letztlich nicht in der Lage, eine Antwort auf die epistemologische Herausforderung der ersten UFO-Sichtungen zu formulieren. Wenn es gilt, die Geschichte des Weltraums in den Mainstream der allgemeinen Geschichte zu integrieren, müssen solche Fragen von ‹agency› sehr viel radikaler gestellt werden als dies bislang der Fall ist.


Personae de l’univers:
Des réseaux cosmopolites de savoir périphérique 1927–1957

Comment l’astrofuturisme s’est-il transformé en un élément central de la modernité occidentale ? A partir des activités de deux protagonistes des débuts du mouvement aérospatial, Willy Ley (1906–1969) et Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008), cet article dessine la genèse d’une cosmopolite internationale de l’univers avant et après la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Pendant que des réseaux transnationaux de petits groupes d’amateurs étaient bien établis dans les années 1930, l’autorité d’expert aérospatial n’était reconnu officiellement qu’aux années 1950 et parallèlement la base du mythe du ‹roquette-scientist› était construit dans la culture populaire. Afin d’accroître l’acceptation sociale, les activistes avait entrepris un procès intellectuel de rationalisation, qu’ils s’étaient imposés eux-mêmes, en séparant la ‹fiction› de la ‹science›. Cependant, ce succès n’offrait pas de réponse au défit épistémologique présenté par les premières vues d’ovnis. Pour intégrer l’histoire de l’univers dans l’histoire générale, ces questions d’‹agency› doit être prononcées avec plus de fermeté que c’était le cas jusqu’à présent.

This paper discusses the "myth" that we have an innate drive to explore or to migrate into space. Three interpretations of the claim are considered. According to the "mystical interpretation," it is part of our "destiny" as humans to explore and migrate into space. Such a claim is unfalsifiable and should play no role in scientifically-minded space advocacy. According to the "cultural interpretation," exploration and migration are essential features of human culture and society. These are not universal features because there are cultures and societies that have not encouraged exploration and migration. According to the "biological interpretation" we have individual psychological or genetic tendencies to explore or migrate. While there is limited genetic evidence for such claims, that evidence suggests that exploratory behavior was selected for during rather than a cause of migration. In none of these senses is it clearly true that we have an innate drive to explore or migrate into space; and even if we did it would be fallacious to argue that the existence of such a drive justified spaceflight activities.

Human factors research is a critical element of space exploration as it provides insight into a crew's 19 performance, psychology and interpersonal relationships. Understanding the way humans work in space-20 exploration analogue environments permits the development and testing of countermeasures for and 21 responses to potential hazardous situations, and can thus help improve mission efficiency and safety. 22

It must be emphasized that this exercise is NOT intended to select "THE Drill" to be developed for a crewed Mars surface mission. The intent is simply to identify a representative drilling technology and concept of operation that is likely to meet scientific needs (as we know them today) for the purpose of assessing Drilling System mass allocation and operational timelines. The results of this exercise will feed into a Mars Lander cargo packaging study, as well as an operations model, to ultimately determine how many rockets must be launched from Earth in order to deliver all needed equipment to Mars.

Freie Universität Berlin, 18–19 March 2016

Over the course of the twentieth century, outer space has developed into a predominant site of utopian thought and futuristic expansion scenarios. Arguing that space transformed into a place where competing visions of the future were projected, posited and played out by experts and the public alike, the final conference of the Emmy Noether Research Group “The Future in the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial Life in the Twentieth Century” at Freie Universität Berlin will examine the rise and fall of the European Space Age from the interwar years through the Post-Apollo period.

Featuring presentations by group members and invited guests, the symposium pursues a double aim. As the project's closing event, it will take stock of individual and collective contributions to the concerted historicization of outer space undertaken since the group's establishment in 2010. It will evaluate to what extent 'astroculture' as a concept, research agenda and a new field of historical research has been successfully integrated into mainstream twentieth-century historiography. Addressing political, cultural, technological and transcendental aspects of space thought and spaceflight, the symposium also examines the existence and potential characteristics of a particularly West-European variant of the global Space Age. Focusing on the role outer space played in the making of the past century's polymorphic and protean futures, it will discuss the transformation of these past planetary futures into today's planetized present.

Conference speakers include Paul Ceruzzi (Washington, DC), Martin Collins (Washington, DC), Martina Heßler (Hamburg), Dirk van Laak (Gießen), Michael Neufeld (Washington, DC), Helmuth Trischler (Munich) and Helmut Zander (Fribourg).

This paper describes low-latency teleoperations (LLT) analyses performed by the NASA Human Spaceflight Architecture Team (HAT), as part of the Evolvable Mars Campaign (EMC). We will cover a variety of mission operations concepts and activities, including task details such as assumptions, sequences, timelines, and potential work systems. We will also present a preliminary task prioritization and potential implications for the Evolvable Mars Campaign and associated technology development.

Space enthusiasts commonly advocate for increased space funding because of spaceflight's alleged impact on STEM education and scientific literacy. However, there is little more than anecdotal evidence for such claims. Until such time as compelling empirical data are gathered, space enthusiasts—in both academic and popular settings—should exercise caution when speaking of spaceflight's inspirational qualities.

The first European space simulation habitat, the Self-Deployable Habitat for Extreme Environments (SHEE) was built by a European consortium within three years (2013 – 2015) under an EU framework 7 contract. Coordinated by the International Space University, France, the team was composed of LIQUIFER Systems Group from Austria, COMEX from France, Space Application Services, Belgium, University of Tartu, Estonia, and Sobriety and Space Innovations, both from the Czech Republic. SHEE is a rigid segment deployable habitat test-bed designed for use in space analogous environments. The objective of the
SHEE project was to develop a self-deployable habitat test-bed that will support a crew of two for a period of up to two weeks in duration. During this time the habitat will provide for all of the environmental, hygiene, dietary, logistical, professional, and psychological needs of
the crew. For habitat simulation purposes and for other research, SHEE can be moved to various terrestrial analogue sites by standard commercial, thus cost effective, transportation.
Testing of the habitat included subsystems performance, interior operations, and effectiveness of the SHEE habitat as a self-deployable and foldable autonomous system. This will be the focus of the paper. It will further be described how these tests can inform future
anticipated operations in the field and any other future exploitation opportunities. One example is the SHEE deployment as part of the Moonwalk FP7 campaign in Rio Tinto, Spain in April 2016. Rio Tinto is an internationally recognised Martian analogue site, mainly because of the presence of extremophile aerobic bacteria that dwell in the water. The project Moonwalk focuses on human-robot interactions and the team will conduct simulation
missions in two analogue sites as preparation of future exploration missions. It is currently planned that the SHEE habitat will be one of the elements to be tested as part of the Mars related simulation in Rio Tinto.

As commercial aerospace companies advance toward manned spaceflight, they must overcome many hurdles – not only technical, but also human. One of the greatest human challenges they face is food. Throughout the history of human spaceflight, astronauts have primarily eaten food developed by government space agencies. Now, with manned commercial flights on the horizon, astronauts will be provided with an entirely new diet – one comprised of commercially available, ready-to-eat food. Yet will this diet keep astronauts nourished, satisfied with their diet, and both
psychologically and physically healthy? The purpose of this parallel crossover design study was to evaluate (a) nutrient intake, (b) food satisfaction, (c) psychological health, and (d) physical health in commercial aerospace employees (N = 7) as they ate a diet of commercial, ready-to-eat
food for four days, as compared to eating as normal for four days.

Findings from this study showed that the ready-to-eat diet did not lead to any significant changes in caloric intake, psychological health, or physical health, aside from weight loss. It is not clear whether this weight loss was due to the loss of body fat, muscle, or water. When eating the ready-to-eat food, participants reported being slightly less satisfied with the variety, reported lower cravings for sweets, and reported the food was slightly less hedonically rewarding. In post-study interviews, participants reported they wanted to see more meats, fruits, vegetables, and desserts added to the ready-to-eat diet, so as to provide more meal-like structure. Overall, these
findings show the diet could be used in commercial spaceflight after making simple changes. The diet could also be used by individuals in remote areas on Earth and to provide food assistance to individuals in disaster or emergency situations. Due to the increasing popularity of
ready-to-eat food around the world, these findings also provide knowledge about the potential consequences of modern eating trends.

The concept of awe is often twinned with that of wonder, evident not least in the experience of spaceflight (Gallagher, Janz, Trempler, Bockelman, Reinerman-Jones 2015). But can the experience of awe be located in less wondrous situations? In this talk, I argue there is a close relation between awe and anxiety. As I argue, awe's historic rootedness in the sublime— with its onus on vastness, turbulence, and ambiguity—sheds light on how psychopathological conditions such as vertigo and agoraphobia are closely related to the experience of awe.

Co-authors Sandra Häuplik-Meusburger (architect and habitability researcher Vienna), Carrie Paterson (artist-researcher, Los Angeles), and Daniel Schubert (DLR-German Space Agency) consider the role of plants in long-term space missions historically since 1971 (Salyut 1) and propose design requirements for greenhouses and constructed environments given a range of plant-human relationships. Greenhouses in space will require advanced technical systems of automatic watering, soil-less cultivation, artificial lighting, and computerized observation of plants. In addition, functions discussed for plants in space habitats include physical/health requirements and human psychology, social cohesion, as well as the complex sensorial benefits of plants for humans. The authors cite recent research conducted by the German Space Agency (DLR) into the use of greenhouses in extreme environments to reveal the relative importance among of greenhouses for people living in isolated locations, and where ...

How has European astrofuturism developed into a central element of Western modernity? Focusing on the activities of the early spaceflight movement, in particular key protagonists Willy Ley (1906–1969) and Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008), this article analzyes the making of a cosmopolitan space international before and after the Second World War. While transnational networks of small amateur groups were well established in the 1930s, it was only in the 1950s that the authority of the space expert was publically acknowledged, laying the foundation of the 'rocket scientist'-myth in popular culture. To increase societal acceptability activists had undergone a self-imposed process of intellectual streamlining. However, that their success in writing fiction out of science had come at a price became obvious when they proved unable to respond to the epistemological challenge presented by the first waves of UFO sightings. Such questions of agency deserve a much more radical and comprehensive treatment than they have hitherto received if the societal impact of outer space is to be adequately historicized and integrated into mainstream cultural historiography.

Carbon nanotubes have been famous since their discovery twenty years ago for their remarkable physical properties, from strength a hundred times higher than steel, to electrical current capacity a 1,000 times higher than copper. But so far they have only been produced at most up to centimeter lengths.
Here are presented some proposals to combine the nanotubes in such a way to get arbitrarily long lengths while maintaining their extraordinary physical properties.

Humanity should not attempt to establish space societies that would not be open to ``baseline'' humans (e.g., those with species-typical oxygen or radiation protection needs).  Two arguments are provided for this conclusion:  The first argument is via analogy with disability and accessibility.  Just as it would be impermissible today to mandate disability-removing medical procedures, so too would it be impermissible to require bodily modification in order to participate in a space society.  We should only create space societies that are accessible to humanity, broadly speaking.  The second argument is that the requirement of bodily modification would pervert the vision of the human expansion into space.  The future we ought to strive for is one in which all humans can travel easily between different destinations in space, in much the way that humans can travel easily between different destinations on Earth.

This paper was written during the Master of Space Studies in the context of, the introductory course, Exact Science and Technology, and of Life Sciences in Space. The author describes the effects of microgravity on human ageing, as well as the essential counter measures.

Medium-range (here defined as under 100 km from a given habitat) extra-vehicular activity (EVA) on Mars will undoubtedly use some variety of mechanized all-terrain vehicles (ATV’s), but there will be times when it is desirable to transport small loads (here defined as under 300 kgf Earth mass 114 kgf Mars mass) without powered, mechanized aid. There is good reason, then, to design a simple vehicle capable of transporting small loads on Mars, similar to the Modular Equipment Transporter (MET) used to transport gear on the moon during the Apollo 14 mission. On Earth equipment is carried in backpack, but for the forseeable future, on Mars explorers will wear a backpack-like portable life support system (PLSS). We propose a ‘wheeled sledge’ or ‘Marscart’, towed with simple traces. This paper introduces the essential design elements and dimensions and presents considerations based the authors’ experience with pulling similar vehicles in Arctic and Australian expeditions. The basic ‘MarsCart’ design is based on lessons from these expeditions as well as lessons from a general anthropological
consideration of equipment design among mobile human societies in which low-tech but reliable tools are used to adapt to various environments for survival and exploration.

This paper defends, and emphasizes the importance of, spaceflight, broadly construed to include human and unmanned spaceflight, space science, exploration and development. Within this discourse, I provide counter-replies to remarks by physicist Dr. Steven Weinberg against my previous support of human spaceflight. In this defense of peaceful spaceflight I draw upon a variety of sources. Although a focus is human spaceflight, human and unmanned modes must not be treated as an either-or opposition. Rather, each has a critical role to play in moving humanity forward as a spacefaring species. In the course of this communication, I also stress the perennial role of space agencies as science and technology-drivers, and their function to provide a stable and unified platform for space programs.

Humans are the most adaptable species on this planet, able to live in vastly different environments on Earth. Space represents the ultimate frontier and a true challenge to human adaptive capabilities. As a group, astronauts and cosmonauts are selected for their ability to work in the highly perilous environment of space, giving their best. Terrestrial research has shown that human cognitive and perceptual motor performances deteriorate under stress. We would expect to observe these effects in space, which currently represents an exceptionally stressful environment for humans. Understanding the neurocognitive and neuropsychological parameters influencing space flight is of high relevance to neuroscientists, as well as psychologists. Many of the environmental characteristics specific to space missions, some of which are also present in space flight simulations, may affect neurocognitive performance. Previous work in space has shown that various psychomotor functions degrade during space flight, including central postural functions, the speed and accuracy of aimed movements, internal timekeeping, attentional processes, sensing of limb position and the central management of concurrent tasks. Other factors that might affect neurocognitive performance in space are illness, injury, toxic exposure, decompression accidents, medication side effects and excessive exposure to radiation. Different tools have been developed to assess and counteract these deficits and problems, including computerized tests and physical exercise devices. It is yet unknown how the brain will adapt to long-term space travel to the asteroids, Mars and beyond. This work represents a comprehensive review of the current knowledge and future challenges of cognitive neuroscience in space from simulations and analog missions to low Earth orbit and beyond.

For a return to the moon or voyage to Mars the extravehicular space suit will take on an
importance that it has never had before in piloted space flight. While EVA space suits
were looked upon in the past as only ancillary hardware, they will be a pivotal technology
to the success of a lunar return or Mars mission. With a possibility of as much as half of
surface time being taken up by extra-vehicular activity, the Martian surface space suit is
not going to be just an afterthought, it will be the focus of much of the mission. Likewise,
EVA systems may even be a pacing technology for a manned Mars landing. A planetary
surface suit will have to meet standards of safety, ruggedness, and low mass that no
present system can provide.
This paper will address the technical choices and trade-offs the authors have found most
appropriate, given the present SOA (State-Of-The-Art) for the architecture of an early
Lunar EVA space suit design that also might be evolvable to the Martian environment.
These choices and trade-offs have been arrived at from open literature, personal studies,
proprietary research performed by Weaver Aerospace Inc. in the middle 1990’s, and
latter studies undertaken by De Leon Technologies LLC personnel in cooperation with
the University of North Dakota’s Space Studies Department’s NDX-1 Space Suit
Demonstrator program.
Accordingly, in this paper, we will explore candidate SOA spacecraft cabin/planetary
space suit pressure/atmospheres, planetary suit enclosure subsystem architectures and
related don-doff methods and a cursory look at candidate planetary EVA life support
subsystems.

This paper discusses a conceptual design of a new countermeasure device named Virtual Gravity Artificial Reality (ViGAR). The device was part of a complete concept called The Human Spaceflight Training Recommendations Against Weightlessness Project (H-STRAW Project). The H-STRAW Project was a submission in the Human Missions Category for the European Space Agency’s 1st Aurora Student Design Contest. ViGAR is a combined countermeasure concept design for a space station, which includes artificial gravity, exercise and virtual reality. The subsystems of ViGAR are outlined in this report and the potential difficulties are identified. ViGAR is a complete system that could potentially be a key design guide for future space missions beyond low Earth orbit and on to Mars.

This paper revisits the Space Guard concept, summarizing some existing ideas, and developing the Coast Guard model. I describe the missions of the USCG, exploring the analogy for a Space Guard. The concept is also generalized by focusing on the spaceflight safety aspect, the analogous maritime aspect of which is maritime safety and preservation of life. A politically-neutral Space Guard reflects a generalization, but also a means for international cooperation to make spaceflight safer. That is, this generalize Space Guard architecture is supported by the fact that orbital space rescue operations, just like maritime rescue, transcends nationality and represents a fundamental human need as we push the boundaries of human presence in space. I also introduce novel operational spaceflight rescue concepts for a Space Guard in any form.

Through the twentieth century, the continual exploration of outer space and its imaginary colonization in science and fiction has led to a new understanding of the space-time continuum. While the physical space surrounding planet Earth was conceptualized ever more precisely, the encounter with the immensity of time has provoked less resonance. This article analyzes the temporal dimension of the Age of Space in three steps. First, it juxtaposes various ways of conceptualizing the so-called Space Age as a significant period in human history. Second, it examines orders of time inherent in West-European space thought, in particular the widespread appeal of time dilatation as seen in Eugen Sänger’s popular 1950s photon rocket scenario. Third, it charts the experience of time on board spaceships, as detailed in astronauts’ autobiographies. This article argues that the appeal of the Space Age lay not only in the promise of continued physical expansion but also in the total control over the fourth dimension envisioned for the future.

In the summer of 2007, the Mars Society conducted a four-month simulated Mars exploration mission at the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS), in the Canadian High Arctic on Devon Island, Nunavut. In addition to an intense mission profile of research, the team also operated on the Martian 'sol', (39 minutes longer than the 24 hour Earth day), for over a month, to evaluate the effects on crew psychophysiology or mission operations. Methods: Team members completed the AstroPCI personality inventory as well as an online questionnaire battery dealing with stress, coping and group functioning on five occasions throughout the mission (pre and monthly). Results: Descriptive analyses indicated differences between individual coping styles across time as well as differences in how the genders coped. Overall, stress increased for males while decreasing for females. Males used consistently more Avoidant coping while females utilized Task coping and Social Emotional coping. Conclusions: Simulations situated in environments that are characterized by prolonged true isolation and real environmental challenges appear to provoke true demands for adaptation rather than temporary situational accommodation as has been evidenced by shorter simulations situated in laboratories or more benign environments. Both complimentary and compensatory coping patterns were in evidence.

The interest in Moon exploration has substantially grown in the latest years, positioning the Moon as an attractive testbed to develop the required technologies and capabilities for human Deep Space exploration. In past decades, lunar missions have almost entirely relied on Direct-to-Earth (DTE) communications, whilst using ranging radiometric measurements from Earth for navigation. The growing trend in the number of missions to the Moon is creating demand for the deployment of a lunar communications and navigations infrastructure to support the international community. This in turn can act as a catalyst for additional public and private worldwide cis-lunar initiatives. The European Space Agency's vision represented in the Moonlight initiative, is to stimulate the creation and development of lunar communications and navigation services, to be delivered by private partner, that will support the next generation of institutional and private Lunar Exploration Missions, including enhancing the performance of those missions currently under definition. Landing on the Moon has been successfully performed since the initial phase of the lunar exploration, both with human and robotic missions. However, recent failures have shown that landing on the Earth natural satellite is no easy task and that accurate landing within 50 metres or even 10 metres from the target location is today considered almost impossible. The limitation of the current technology does not allow to explore directly specific areas of interest. For example landing close to a permanently shadowed areas, without risk of landing in the shadow and thus losing the mission or landing on peaks of eternal light. Finally, landing on the far side is currently very risky and difficult, requiring dedicated lunar infrastructure for each mission (e.g. Chang'e 4 mission), thus potentially precluding the access to the lunar far side for future missions. The Moonlight navigation service aims to improve significantly the landing accuracy, potentially enabling landing on peaks of eternal light or landing in very specific locations while at the same time saving propellant mass and shortening the duration from launch to landing. The paper will describe the potential concept of operations for the navigation service and how future missions could take benefits of Moonlight navigation service, assess the performances achievable on a specific mission profile representative of a lunar lander mission and describe the high-level user terminal, including its preliminary size, mass and power profile.

While stress is a widely utilized concept, no direct methods facilitating its measurement are currently available. In our previous work we proposed stress entropic load (SEL) as a potential new marker of stress response in the human body. However, at that time no method for SEL measurement existed. In this pilot study we devised and then tested methodology for SEL measurement. Healthy male participants were monitored by indirect calorimetry and thermography while resting and subsequently while under prolonged mental effort. The acquired data was then used to calculate the temporal development of SEL for each participant. Our results show that SEL production increased significantly in participants subjected to prolonged mental effort. Furthermore, we observed that the calculated development of SEL over time may be used to accurately determine the time point at which participants started performing stressful tasks.