Considerations for Increasing Habitability for Autonomous Deep-Space Habitat Operations

Deep-space human missions will require increasing operational autonomy for the onboard crew and habitat as extensive Earth support and reliance is impractical and, at times, impossible. The habitat and crew must become an ‘autonomous system’, capable of operating for finite time periods without external aid from Earth-based ground support such as teleoperators, ground facilities, and other space assets. Since logistical resupply becomes unfeasible in deep-space and Earth-based communications are delayed, additional onboard capabilities are required of the deep-space habitat that move toward self-sufficiency. Opportunities for potential benefits, or improvements beyond State of the Art (SoA) design practice for human habitats are identified and explored in this paper for their contributions to improving habitability. Where self-sufficiency captures required functionality, potentially beneficial opportunities that can improve crew well-being can be mapped to habitability. This research paper proposes a process to characterize habitability by aligning it with two of the three key tenets of a human-rated spacecraft: Accommodate and Utilize, while the third tenet, Protect, which is focused on risk mitigation, is not addressed in this research effort. Novel stratifications of ‘Attributes of Accommodate’ (what the habitat does) and ‘Degrees of Utilize’ (what the crew does) to assess the tenets of accommodate and utilize are proposed to detail how a habitat with increasingly autonomous capabilities influences habitat and crew task allocation. Components of habitability, distilled from a broad literature review, are then aligned with proposed attributes of accommodate and applied to select examples from past missions.