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NASA's Advanced Extra-Vehicular Activity Space Suit Pressure 48th International Conference on Environmental Systems ICES-2018-273 8-12 July 2018, Albuquerque, New Mexico NASA’s Advanced Extra-vehicular Activity Space Suit Pressure Garment 2018 Status and Development Plan Amy Ross,1 and Richard Rhodes 2 NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, 77058 Shane McFarland3 NASA Johnson Space Center/MEI, Houston, TX, 77058 This paper presents both near-term and long-term NASA Advanced Extra-vehicular Activity (EVA) Pressure Garment development efforts. The near-term plan discusses the development of pressure garment components for the first design iteration of the International Space Station exploration space suit demonstration configuration, termed the xEMU Demo. The xEMU Demo effort is targeting a 2023-2025 flight demonstration timeframe. The Fiscal Year 2018 (FY18) tasks focus on either the initiation or maturation of component design, depending on the state of development of the components, and the assembly of a suit configuration, termed Z-2.5, that will be used to evaluate changes to the upper torso geometry in a Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) test series. The geometry changes, which are being driven by the need to reduce the front-to-back dimension of the advanced extravehicular mobility unit, diverge from a proven shape, such as that of the Mark III Space Suit Technology Demonstrator. The 2018 efforts culminate in the Z-2.5 NBL test. The lessons learned from the Z-2.5 NBL test will inform the xEMU Demo design as the effort moves toward design verification testing and preliminary and critical design reviews. The long-term development plan looks to surface exploration and operations. Technology and knowledge gaps exist between the xEMU Demo configuration; a lunar surface capability, xEMU; and Mars surface suit, mEMU. The development plan takes into account both the priority and the anticipated development duration for each particular technology. The long-term development plan will be updated as risks are mitigated and gaps are closed, but its overarching structure will remain intact. Nomenclature AES = Advanced Exploration Systems ALCVG = Auxiliary-loop Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment ARGOS = Active Response Gravity Offload System CDR = Critical Design Review DVT = Design Verification Testing ELTA = The Z-2 configuration using the ISS EMU Lower Torso Assembly EMU = Extra-vehicular Mobility Unit EPG = Environmental Protection Garment EVA = Extra-vehicular Activity EVVA = Extra-vehicular Visor Assembly FY = Fiscal Year HITL = Human-in-the-Loop HUT = Hard Upper Torso ICS = Integrated Communication System ISS = International Space Station 1 Lead for Advanced EVA Pressure Garment Development, Crew Survival and Space Suit System Branch, Mail Stop EC5. 2 Space Suit Engineer, Crew Survival and Space Suit System Branch, Mail Stop EC5. 3 Senior Project Engineer, Crew Survival and Space Suit System Branch, Mail Stop EC5. LCVG = Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment LTA = Lower Torso Assembly MWC = Multiple Water Connector mEMU = Mars EMU NBL = Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory PDR = Preliminary Design Review PGS = Pressure Garment System SAFER = Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue SRR = System Requirements Review SSAER = Space to Space Advanced EMU Radio PLSS = Portable Life Support System SBIR = Small Business Innovative Research SHERLOC= Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals STMD = Space Technology Mission Directorate xEMU = Exploration EMU xPGS = Exploration PGS ZLTA = The Z-2 configuration using the Z-2 Lower Torso Assembly I. Introduction ver the past several decades, advanced space suit pressure garment development has progressed at widely O varying paces: sometimes depending on small research grants with a skeleton crew, and other times working under a strong funding source with an expanded team. The number of space suit development efforts that have started and stopped are in the double digits, with the Constellation Program space suit effort being the most recently ended. Following the Constellation Program, a series of funding sources have pursued a program of hardware production versus investing in longer-lead technology research and development. The Z-2 advanced space suit prototype was the primary product of this effort to date.1,2 The successes of the technology development effort and the need for new space suits led to funding from the International Space Station (ISS) Program for a demonstration of advanced space suit technology on ISS. This paper discusses the current plan for the ISS demonstration, as well as advanced pressure garment technology development that is relevant looking forward to the Lunar Orbiting Platform-Gateway and other future exploration missions. II. Plan for ISS Demonstration of Space Suit Technology The Advanced EVA team has been asked to support a demonstration of advanced space suit technology on ISS in the 2023-2025 timeframe. The team is working to the following major milestones shown in Figure 1. Dates for intermediate milestones are missing because they are dependent upon the flight demonstration date and the project is studying both options, but a final determination has not yet been made. Figure 1: xEMU Demo Project Milestones [Note: in this project DVT denotes an Engineering Unit evaluation vs. proto-certification testing] The uncertainty regarding the timing of the ISS Flight demonstration arises from the difference between the original project deadline and an alternate deadline that is under consideration. When the project began, it was planned against a flight demonstration occurring in 2025. However, the ISS Program’s official end currently is in 2 International Conference on Environmental Systems 2024. Therefore, the project has been asked to provide a project plan that results in performing the flight demonstration in 2023, prior to the end of the ISS Program. The project is maintaining the schedule for the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) in 2019, but is determining the placement of subsequent milestones. In order to meet this schedule, the Pressure Garment System (PGS) is building upon the work that was funded by the Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Program that resulted in fabrication of the Z-2 advanced pressure garment prototype. The Z-2 is the culmination of over 20 years of planetary surface exploration pressure garment development and testing with its direct lineage tracing from the Mark III Advanced Space Suit Technology Demonstrator to the Waist-entry and Rear-entry I-Suits and, finally, the Z-1 prototype.3,4,5,6 While these predecessors principally served as testbeds for planetary surface suit mobility joint system development, the Z-2 took steps to mature the hardware toward flight requirements and interfaces.2 Two configurations of the Z-2 suit were used in a series of 19 Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) tests to assess their ability to perform micro-gravity Extra-vehicular Activity (EVA) on the ISS.1,7,8 The first configuration used the Z-2 mobile lower torso assembly (LTA) (ZLTA) in combination with its upper torso. The second configuration mated the Z-2 upper torso with an ISS Extra-vehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) lower torso (ELTA). The architecture being proposed for the ISS Demonstration, labeled ‘xEMU Demo’ where the ‘x’ stands for ‘Exploration’, is similar to the ELTA configuration as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2: xEMU Demo FY18 PGS components Therefore, the advanced PGS components of the xEMU Demo consist of the following: Hard Upper Torso, including hatch (HUT) Helmet Extra-vehicular Visor Assembly (EVVA) Shoulders Auxiliary-loop Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment (ALCVG) Integrated Communication System (ICS) Biomedical monitoring (termed Biomed) 3 International Conference on Environmental Systems Dust mitigating Environmental Protection Garment (EPG) integration The xEMU Demo efforts being performed in FY18 are driven by both changes recommended from the Z-2 NBL test series and preparation for PDR. The hardware revisions will be assembled into a prototype named Z-2.5, which will be used in a series of NBL tests at the end of year to provide confidence in the designs going into PDR. The effort for each component will be briefly described. A. Hard Upper Torso HUT work in FY18 focused on three areas: 1) changes to the HUT geometry, 2) composites development, and 3) a preliminary, HUT-focused fleet sizing study. i. Geometry Changes One of the major findings from the Z-2 NBL test was that the dimension from the front of the upper torso to the back edge of the Portable Life Support System (PLSS) was deep enough to make it more difficult to egress and ingress the ISS airlock hatch because careful alignment was needed.7 Figure 3 illustrates the 5-inch (12.7-cm) difference between Z-2 and the ISS EMU system depths, without the Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER). A major factor in this difference between the Z-2 and the ISS EMU is the angle of the hatch of the rear-entry Z-2 configuration.1 The hatch is angled 9.5 degrees from vertical, whereas the EMU PLSS is oriented vertically. The rear-entry hatch angle results from connecting the waist bearing to the helmet ring, the orientations of which were selected to allow walking mobility and visibility, respectively. As can be seen in Figure 3, the depth difference is greater when the SAFER box is mounted at the bottom of the PLSS, extending the Z-2 system depth to approximately 30 inches. Figure 4 is an image from the NBL testing that demonstrates the limited clearances that results from the system depth when performing airlock ingress and egress. In Figure 4, the test subject is exiting the airlock in a heads-down attitude, with the subject’s head pointed downward and their body oriented vertically. Figure 3: Difference in system depths between Z-2 and ISS EMU 4 International Conference on Environmental Systems Figure 4: Limited clearances for airlock ingress/egress due to Z-2 system depth In order to reduce the depth dimension, the PGS team changed the hatch and neck ring angles as shown in Figure 5.
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