Abstract:
The methodology and results presented in this paper seek to work towards a modeling and simulation environment for space habitats that is capable of dynamically deciding which subsystems to use in light of various system failures and degradations while measuring its own resilience to these system faults. This environment could also double as a digital twin environment of a physical space habitat. Once completed, it would be useful in both designing an optimally resilient habitat capable of meeting all its mission requirements and as a habitat support and management tool on a functioning space habitat. This work develops a dynamic analysis and decision-making tool that is able to query the functionality status of all of the subsystems, predict the lifetime of key resources and allow for user-assigned logic controls to dynamically institute resource management strategies to respond to a degraded state. Two resource management strategies have been evaluated with this tool. The first responded to a fault in the water recycling systems by turning off the oxygen generation system, which utilizes water to create oxygen. The second altered the crewmembers’ schedules, changing any upcoming extravehicular activities to less intensive intravehicular activities if it was predicted that the habitat would run out of oxygen before the end of the mission. Both of these strategies proved effective in increasing the lifespan of the crew. © 2019 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.
