Humans to Mars, But how Many? PART II: Using Human Performance Models to Inform Mars Crew Size
Discipline: Human Factors
Abstract:
Missions to Mars will differ from all previous human spaceflight missions in that the onboard crew of astronauts will be required to operate in an Earth-independent manner given the long communication delays on Mars missions. Without a systematic, repeatable process to determine the number and composition of crew necessary to successfully accomplish these missions, NASA increases the risk in that crew sizes may be too small to meet primary mission objectives under nominal conditions and, more consequentially, the crewmembers may not have the necessary expertise to successfully respond to unforeseen failures without the real-time expertise in the Mission Control Central team on which NASA has come to rely.
The NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) has developed a methodology for quantitatively assessing the trade space of factors that affect the number of crew for future missions. This methodology includes the consideration of results from three human performance models developed using the Improved Performance Research and Integration Tool (IMPRINT) modeling platform as well as a custom-built model on expertise trained within the crew. Dr. Dempsey presents the methodology along with results from the models and discusses how the model results can be used in developing a trade space for supporting crew size determination for missions to Mars.
About the Speaker:
Donna Dempsey is the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) Discipline Deputy for Human Factors. Dr. Dempsey is interested in the human system integration architecture necessary to support Earth-independent operations for NASA’s Mars missions. Dr. Dempsey began her career her career at NASA as an instructor in the Mission Operations Directorate (MOD) Space Flight Training Division, training crew and flight controllers on the ISS command and data handling system and later training crew on daily operations onboard ISS. After fifteen years conducting space flight training, she combined her past research experience with her training experience to transition from the Flight Operations Directorate (FOD), formerly MOD, to the Human Health & Performance Directorate (HH&PD) to conduct human factors and human system integration research and assessments. Over the past four years, Dr. Dempsey led an NESC assessment to develop a new agency capability for quantitative trade space analysis for crew size in support of the Agency determining the number of crew for Mars missions.
