Taxonomy Category Summary

This taxonomy category is divided into six areas: environmental control & life support systems (ELCSS) and habitation systems, extravehicular activity (EVA) systems, human health and performance, environmental monitoring, safety, and emergency response, radiation, and human systems integration (HSI). ELCSS and habitation systems focus on maintaining an environment suitable for sustaining human life throughout the duration of the mission. Areas include: atmosphere revitalization, water recovery and management, waste management, habitation systems (hygiene, store food), and ELCSS modeling and simulation. EVA systems are those associated with enabling astronauts to work outside a spacecraft’s habitable environment (pressure garment, portable life support system, informatics support system, decompression sickness integration, etc.). Human health and performance technology supports optimal performance through the duration of a mission and promotes health at all times. It focuses on medical diagnosis and prognosis, prevention and countermeasures, behavioral health and performance (psychological), contactless/wearable health/performance monitors, and food production, processing and preservation. Environmental monitoring, safety and emergency response ensures crew health and safety by protecting against spacecraft hazards and ensuring effective response for a possible incident: air, water, microbial, and acoustic sensors, detection, suppression, and recovery in case of fire, protective clothing, and the ability for crew to clean incase of an incident. Radiation technology increases crew mission duration in the free-space radiation environment and focuses on radiation transport and risk modeling, radiation mitigation and biological countermeasures, radiation shielding technologies, space weather prediction, and radiation monitoring technology. Human system integration focuses on improving total system performance by integrating human considerations through hardware and software (human factor engineering, user training, habitable environment, integrated systems safety, and simple maintenance and optimized support).

Research Affiliates

Below are our faculty affiliates whose research fall under this taxonomy category.