Robert Howard

• Manager at Johnson Space Center

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2022-4357.vid The Common Habitat is a large, long-duration habitat that uses an SLS core stage Liquid Oxygen (LOX) tank as its primary structure. Measuring 8.4 meters in diameter and 15 meters in length, it is manufactured as a habitat and launched as such into space. It is intended for use on the...

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2022-4266.vid NASA is currently developing concepts for sustained crewed missions to the lunar surface. Sustained missions will occur on annual basis for durations of 30 days or more. To house and support the crew, NASA is exploring the use of a lunar Surface Habitat. NASA relies on conceptual spac...

NASA human factor design engineers wanted to examine if there would be any differences in testing low-fidelity conceptual designs in a physical environment compared to a virtual environment. An evaluation of two identical environments was conducted with subject matter experts (SMEs). Results indicated that when testing a design concept at this earl...

Lunar landers currently under development for crew and cargo missions to the Moon are limited by the available boosters to launch them from Earth. Most landers are being developed for commercial launch vehicles (CLVs) in the Falcon Heavy / Vulcan / New Glenn / Atlas V class, limiting their performance with many lunar surface studies consequently re...

Recent conjunction class Mars human mission plans have generally assumed that there will inevitably be periods of communications outages between Earth and Mars. This has significant cost and risk implications for not only Mars missions, but also precursor missions in the lunar environment. But are there ways to avoid these outages? The potential ex...

The Artemis program is committed to landing humans on the Moon in the 2020s leading to a sustainable lunar presence by the end of the decade. It is challenging to deliver heavy payloads to the lunar surface in support of these goals given currently available Earth launch systems. The payload capacity of the launch systems limits the size of the lun...

The Common Habitat is a long-duration habitat concept based on the Skylab II architecture that leverages a single, multi-destination design applicable to microgravity Mars transit, 1/6 g lunar surface, 3/8 g Mars surface, and 1 g Earth. A trade study for the Common Habitat will address vertical versus horizontal internal orientation and a crew size...

For any given surface mission duration, there exists a set of surface capabilities necessary to sustain a four-person crew for the length of time the crew is on the surface. Identifying these capabilities is important to mission planners and spacecraft design engineers responsible for lunar surface habitation elements, who need to know which system...

This paper performs a stowage assessment of the four baseline variants of the Common Habitat, a SLS-derived long duration, multi-mission habitat. The Common Habitat can be utilized as a lunar surface outpost, a Mars surface outpost, or an in-space habitat for Mars transit flights. The paper will discuss the stowage philosophy applied to all baselin...

In many human Mars exploration architectures, a Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) is used at the end of a surface stay to transport crew from the Martian surface to a waiting in-space transportation vehicle. It is possible for this transportation vehicle to be placed in any of several different Mars orbits, the selection of which drives the flight duration...

From 2008 to 2010, the NASA Small Pressurized Rover was tested in the Arizona desert in anticipation of human lunar surface missions. These tests were multi-day mission simulations with crew living in and conducting simulated lunar surface EVAs from the rover prototypes for 3, 7, or 14 days. This two-person surface spacecraft represents a departure...

Landing and supporting a permanent outpost on a planetary surface represents humankind's capability to expand its own horizons and challenge current technology. With this in mind, habitability of these structures becomes more essential given the longer durations of the missions. The purpose of this evaluation was to obtain preliminary human-in-the-...

Social network analysis (SNA) refers to the collection of techniques, tools, and methods used in sociometry aiming at the analysis of social networks to investigate decision making, group communication, and the distribution of information. Human factors engineers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted a social network...

For the last 3 years, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been testing a pressurized rover prototype in the deserts of Arizona to obtain humanin-the-loop performance data. This year's field trial consisted of operating two rovers simultaneously while embarking on two 7-day flight-like exploration missions. During the 2010 D...

Various military and commercial entities, as well as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), have conducted space-cabin confinement studies. However, after an extensive literature search, only one study was found using a simulated lunar rover (LUNEX II), under laboratory conditions, with a crew of two for an 18-day lunar mission....

This paper documents NASA's habitation approach for the Constellation Architecture Team `Scenario 12.1' lunar outpost concept. The architecture team defined an outpost scenario optimized for intensive mobility that uses small, highly mobile pressurized rovers supported by portable habitat modules that can be carried between locations of interest on...

To effectively explore the lunar surface, astronauts will need a transportation vehicle which can traverse all types of terrain. Currently, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) is investigating two lunar rover configurations to meet such a requirement. Under the Lunar Electric Rover (LER) project, a comparison study between th...

A natural component to driving any type of vehicle, whether Earth-based or space-based, is visibility. In its simplest form, visibility is a measure of the distance at which an object can be seen. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have human factors guidelines for the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS) wi...

The lunar surface habitat will serve as the astronauts' "home on the moon," providing a pressurized facility for all crew living functions and serving as the primary location for a number of crew work functions. Adequate volume is required for each of these functions in addition to that devoted to housing the habitat systems and crew consumables. T...

Issues of moving through hatchways and related design problems of hatch size and shape were investigated for the Altair lunar habitat. To insure proper usability and safety, the goal of the current study was to understand the critical dimensions necessary for proper translation through the hatch by manipulating size (height, width, step over height...

Pressurized rovers will be a critical component of successful lunar exploration to enable safe investigation of sites distant from the outpost location. A pressurized rover is a complex system with the same functions as any other crewed vehicle. Designs for a pressurized rover need to take into account significant constraints, a multitude of tasks...

The purpose of this paper is to present the work done by the Habitation Strategy Team during Phase 1 of the RFT0019.05 JSC Lunar Surface Scenario Study conducted during the Spring 2005. The team started by reviewing the Lunar Roadmap Architecture Options, then identifying strategies related to habitation for each option. While doing this, the team...