Human Spaceflight Graduate Projects: Recommendations for Project-Based Aerospace Systems Engineering

With the advancement of human spaceflight, there arises a need for continued research on the effects of spaceflight on the human body and the demand for innovative technologies to support life in space. To meet this need, the Aerospace Engineering Sciences (ASEN) department at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) created the Bioastronautics program. Through research, coursework, and graduate projects, this program equips students with the knowledge and skills to solve problems associated with human spaceflight. The CU Boulder ASEN human spaceflight graduate project incorporates design, analysis, manufacturing, and testing principles in a one- to two-semester curriculum. Students are often connected with a mentoring industry partner and provided with project information documents each semester, including the Design Reference Mission (DRM), the Statement of Work (SOW), and ground rules. From there, the team divides into management and sub-teams and breaks down the work required to complete the project by the end of the semester. Previous Human Spaceflight Graduate Projects include Medical Emergency Designers for Interplanetary Crisis Scenarios (MEDICS), Advanced Space Transit and Residency Architecture (ASTRA), and Integrated Lunar Occupation Outpost (IgLOO). MEDICS focused on providing a fully functional high-fidelity mobile emergency medical unit for planetary human spaceflight missions. The results of this project are being used each year by the department’s Medicine in Space and Surface Environments course, which is attended by both aerospace and medical students. ASTRA designed a Mars Transit Vehicle (MTV), which aimed to help enable exploration missions beyond the Earth-Moon system. It paved the way for the IgLOO project, which designed a conceptual lunar habitat focused on optimizing volume with reconfigurable elements and fully supporting crew and mission needs without reliance on additional supporting infrastructure. Both the ASTRA and IgLOO teams created mockups of their habitats over the course of a semester. Currently, work is being done on a Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Environmental Removal for Extended Duration Spaceflight (CERES) and a Habitat for Interplanetary Versatile Exploration (HIVE). CERES focuses on researching and developing a prototype carbon dioxide removal system for human spaceflight trans-planetary operations. HIVE is designing and building a medium-to-high-fidelity mockup of an adapted version of the IgLOO conceptual design, with the added capability of being configurable as either a microgravity or planetary surface habitat. The HIVE habitat will undergo rigorous human factors testing to validate the design choices. One of the major objectives of HIVE is to provide a simulated habitat for future CU Boulder ASEN research that allows for future Human Spaceflight Graduate Project Teams to continue improving its design and student and faculty researchers to utilize the high-fidelity mockup for testing. The lessons learned throughout the course of these graduate project have iteratively informed the following semester’s graduate project, allowing students to build upon the experience of their predecessors. The lessons learned from HIVE will be compiled and passed forward to the Fall 2025 Human Spaceflight graduate project team, intending to help the next team. This paper breaks down the lessons learned over the past four semesters from the MEDICS, ASTRA, CERES, IgLOO, and HIVE projects by management, design, and human factors teams. The management lessons will focus on the effective leading of a small team to complete significant amounts of work on short timescales (typically one to two semesters in this case). Lessons learned include the importance of effective communication between management and team members, organized work breakdowns, proper sub-team integration, well-reviewed documentation, and leadership support to the team. This feedback will come from the project managers and those in other management positions, such as deputy project manager, systems engineer, and technical director. The design recommendations will include an overview of lessons learned from multiple subsystems relevant to human spaceflight (Thermal, Crew Accommodations, Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLS), etc.). This paper will discuss struggles shared across subsystems and recommendations for avoiding these difficulties in the future. Possible revisions to the design process for teams of this size (~6-14 people) will also be examined. Human factors are critical to the design of human spaceflight mission components. Something relatively unique to this project is the exposure to conducting day-in-the-life human factors tests (for habitat mockups). These tests allow for the validation of the conceptual design and determination of areas for design improvement. The human factors test designs are continuously improved through iteration. The MEDICS, ASTRA, and IgLOO teams have all learned valuable lessons that are being applied as HIVE’s human factors tests are designed. This work aims to share knowledge with test conductors allowing them to learn from prior experiences and enhance their understanding. In summary, this paper introduces the human spaceflight graduate projects taking place in CU Boulder’s Bioastronautics program, summarizes past projects, and discusses hard-earned lessons learned across various teams. This investigation provides a breakdown of insights into management, design, and human factors; including the importance of effective leadership, robust subsystem designs, and thorough human factors testing. Based on these lessons compiled from several semesters, this paper proposes suggestions for improving future human spaceflight projects or student engineering teams and how they might be implemented by other student teams to grow as a bioastronautics student community.