TOWARDS A SUSTAINED HUMAN PRESENCE ON MARS – AN OVERVIEW OF MIT’S INTEGRATED SPACE HABITATION, LOGISTICS, AND LIFECYCLE ANALYSIS CAPABILITIES
Sydney Do and Andrew Owens, PhD Candidates, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
December 2, 2014, 2:00 pm, NIA, Room 101 [Webcast]
Abstract:
This talk will summarize the research capabilities that have been developed at MIT’s Strategic Engineering Research Group over the past decade in the systems architecting and life cycle analysis of multi-decade, multi-vehicle, and multi-mission human spaceflight campaigns. Following a discussion of our research approach, we will present the findings of a recent integrated study we performed on the technical feasibility of the Mars One mission plan. Through this analysis, we explore and discuss the impact of key architectural decisions including sparing philosophy, in-situ manufacturing, in-situ resource utilization, life support architecture, and crew growth profile on the life cycle costs of crewed Mars mission campaigns.
Biographies:
Sydney Do (sydneydo@mit.edu)
Sydney Do is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the MIT. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Sydney, Australia, and a Master’s degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT. His past research has been in the areas of fuel-efficient satellite formation flight, land-landings of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, and the crowdsourcing of engineering ideation and innovation. He is currently the lead researcher in space habitation and life support within the Strategic Engineering Research Group at MIT.
Andrew Owens (acowens@mit.edu)
Andrew Owens is a Ph.D. candidate and NASA Space Technology Research Fellow in the Strategic Engineering Research Group at MIT. His research focuses on complex systems reliability, resilience, and maintainability and the prediction of logistics requirements related to spare parts for long-duration space systems. He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rice University, where he co-founded the Rice University Solar Car Team, and an S.M. in Aerospace Engineering from MIT, with previous research into modeling and simulation of environmental control and life support systems.