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NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Commercial Crew Program and Medical Operational Challenges

This abstract is submitted as part of the USSPACECOM Command Surgeon’s panel demonstrating the medical capabilities and challenges involved in human space flight support operations. BACKGROUND: NASA embarked on the Commercial Crew Program to launch astronauts into low-earth orbit from US soil and dock with the International Space Station (ISS). The eventual industry providers selected were SpaceX (SpX) and Boeing. These commercial transportation systems are vital to ensure crew availability on ISS for research and discovery. OVERVIEW: NASA/SpaceX Demo-2 (DM2) mission launched from the Kennedy Space Center in 2020 as the historic first crewed test-flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft with two NASA Astronauts onboard. DM2 represented the first flight in 9-years from US soil since STS-135 in 2011. The 63-day mission ended with splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, the first US water recovery in 45-years since Apollo-Soyuz. Validation of system hardware and operations allowed four-person crews to launch on subsequently missions (Crew-1, Crew-2, Crew-3, Crew-4, Crew-5 to date), which included International Partner crewmembers. DISCUSSION: A multitude of operational, training, medical, and technical issues needed to be addressed between NASA Medical Operations, the commercial provider SpaceX, and the Department of Defense. These included Flight rule development, occupant protection, pressurized suit testing, communication plans during mission phases, and emergency simulations for supporting Flight Surgeons and Biomedical Engineers. In providing crew experience with expected launch and entry G-force profile, Centrifuge training was established. Preventive health measures via the Health Stabilization Program were especially vital during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Unique aspects arise for SpX Dragon parachute splashdown and shipboard recovery operations in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. The new Commercial Crew Program is indeed a wonderfully challenging and exciting era for human spaceflight.

Joseph Dervay↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Conjunction Assessment and Deconfliction Paradigm for Co-Located Satellite Constellations With on-Spacecraft “Autonomous” Flight Dynamics Control

Satellite constellations that employ on-spacecraft flight dynamics and conjunction assessment (CA) approaches face particular challenges. First, they must arrange to obtain and upload to the constellation satellite close approach information, such as Conjunction Data Messages, so that their on-board systems will have the data they need to make informed CA decisions. Second, given current latencies in obtaining CA screening information, such systems often cannot obtain dedicated screenings of their proposed maneuvers before they are executed. Third, they usually cannot engage in real time with owner/operators (O/Os) with whom they may come into conjunction, relying instead on pre-arranged courses of action that may or may not fit a given situation well. Despite these difficulties, it is nonetheless possible, as operators such as SpaceX have demonstrated, to operate safely using on-board CA calculations, in the presence of a largely collaborative operating environment. The situation breaks down, however, when two constellations that operate with such a paradigm are placed in the same orbital region and will experience conjunctions with each other. Each may have a vague idea of where the other’s satellites are, or perhaps even a somewhat precise idea if they exchange O/O ephemerides, but neither will know the other’s more immediate maneuver intentions, especially for situations in which they are in a high-risk conjunction with each other and a mitigation maneuver is required. As there is no formalized way for these automated systems to ascertain each other’s intentions for this type of conjunction, it is quite possible that each spacecraft may choose a maneuver that results in the two objects’ colliding. An opportunity to develop a solution to this problem was presented by the NASA “Starling” project, a small experimental constellation developed to demonstrate autonomous satellite control and constellation reconfiguration and for which a launch was obtained that, serendipitously, will place this constellation close to the SpaceX Starlink constellation. Because the NASA constellation is experimental, an extended mission part of the mission has been negotiated to implement and test mechanisms for resolving the problem of co-located constellations with on-board flight dynamics control. For the last eighteen months, a consortium among NASA Ames (the Starling satellite providers), NASA CARA (the Agency organization responsible for conjunction assessment), Space X, and the Department of Commerce (in observer status) has met regularly to assemble a concept of operations for a robust solution to this problem and has developed a prototype ground node that will serve as a needed CA screening and information dispensary. The approach and methods, as well as the active employment of the developed ground node, will be tested both in simulation before actual use and then in actual spacecraft operations, which are anticipated to begin in January 2024. This paper will describe the co-located autonomously-controlled constellation problem and the developed solution in detail, outlining what ground node (i.e., government) infrastructure and features are required, what particular capabilities are needed by the constellations themselves in order to make use of this deconfliction paradigm, and the migration path forward to allow such a capability set to be incorporated by the Department of Commerce’s space traffic coordination system.

Conjunction Assessment↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Commercial Crew Program and Medical Operational Challenges

BACKGROUND: NASA embarked on the Commercial Crew Program to launch astronauts into low-earth orbit from US soil and dock with the International Space Station (ISS). The eventual industry providers selected were SpaceX (SpX) and Boeing. These commercial transportation systems are vital to ensure crew availability on ISS for research and discovery. OVERVIEW: NASA/SpaceX Demo-2 (DM2) mission launched from the Kennedy Space Center in 2020 as the historic first crewed test-flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft with two NASA Astronauts onboard. DM2 represented the first flight in 9-years from US soil since STS-135 in 2011. The 63-day mission ended with splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, the first US water recovery in 45-years since Apollo-Soyuz. Validation of system hardware and operations allowed four-person crews to launch on subsequently missions (Crew-1, Crew-2, Crew-3, Crew-4, Crew-5 to date), which included International Partner crewmembers. DISCUSSION: A multitude of operational, training, medical, and technical issues needed to be addressed between NASA Medical Operations, the commercial provider SpaceX, and the Department of Defense. These included Flight rule development, occupant protection, pressurized suit testing, communication plans during mission phases, and emergency simulations for supporting Flight Surgeons and Biomedical Engineers. In providing crew experience with expected launch and entry G-force profile, Centrifuge training was established. Preventive health measures via the Health Stabilization Program were especially vital during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Unique aspects arise for SpX Dragon parachute splashdown and shipboard recovery operations in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. The new Commercial Crew Program is indeed a wonderfully challenging and exciting era for human spaceflight.

Joseph P Dervay↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Impact of Impulsive Vs Finite Maneuver Modeling on Launch Transfer Trajectories for The Roman Space Telescope

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST) is a flagship astrophysics observatory developed by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for launch in the mid-2020’s. The nominal mission orbit for RST is a Sun-Earth L2 quasi-halo orbit subject to stringent geometric and dynamical constraints necessary for achieving mission science objectives. After award of the launch vehicle contract to SpaceX, comparing the launch solutions produced by the RST Flight Dynamics team and the SpaceX team revealed that despite targeting the same interface states, modeling the second-stage insertion burn with an impulsive delta-V vs. a higher fidelity finite burn model can result in substantial differences in achieved libration point orbit properties. In this paper, these differences are explored and leveraged to update the models and targeting strategies used by the RST Flight Dynamics tools. These updates allow the mission to achieve more flight-like ascent and insertion dynamics for the libration point transfer, as well as reveal interesting relationships between the dynamics of impulsive models and finite burn models for libration point transfer trajectories in general.

Lauren Schlenker↗

NASA NTRS2026

Overview of Past and Future EVA Suit Testing and Training in Chamber B at NASA JSC

The Crew and Thermal System Division’s Chamber B has received an increase in demand for next generation suit testing. Chamber B is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Johnson Space Center’s only human-rated thermal vacuum (TVAC) chamber. Historically it was used in Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Shuttle, and the International Space Station (ISS) suit tests. Recently, the chamber has been returned to service with new capabilities for suit testing. In 2023, The Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) underwent a 5-day, extensive thermal vacuum test that included both a full-bodied Exploration Pressure Garment Suit (xPGS) as well as a high fidelity Short xEMU. SpaceX has also used the chamber for human-in-the-loop (HITL) qualification and acceptance testing on their flight Polaris Dawn suits for the first-ever commercial extravehicular activity (EVA). Current chamber Manlock B2 upgrades include the support of two test subjects at the same time with updated chamber interface and support systems for the next generation of suits. This paper will discuss the history of spacesuit testing in the chamber, the recent testing for commercial and NASA suits, and upgrades to accommodate new test requirements.

Polaris Dawn↗

NASA NTRS2026

Overview of Past and Future EVA Suit Testing and Training in Chamber B at NASA JSC

Human-in-the-loop↗

DOE OSTI2020

Relevance of the Unfolded Protein Response to Spaceflight-Induced Transcriptional Reprogramming in Arabidopsis

Plants are primary producers of food and oxygen on Earth and will likewise be indispensable to the establishment of large-scale sustainable ecosystems and human survival in space. To contribute to the understanding of how plants respond to spaceflight stress, we examined the significance of the unfolded protein response (UPR), a conserved signaling cascade that responds to a number of unfavorable environmental stresses, in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. To do so, we performed a large-scale comparative transcriptome profiling in wild type and various UPR-defective mutants during the SpaceX-CRS12 mission to the International Space Station. We established that orbital culture substantially alters the expression of hundreds of stress-related genes compared with ground control conditions. Although expression of those genes varied in the UPR mutants on the ground, it was largely similar across the genotypes in the spaceflight condition. Furthermore, our results have yielded new information on how plants respond to growth in orbit and support the hypothesis that spaceflight induces the activation of signaling pathways that compensate for the loss of UPR regulators in the control of downstream transcriptional regulatory networks.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2020

Mitigation of LEO Satellite Brightness and Trail Effects on the Rubin Observatory LSST

In this work, we report studies on the mitigation of optical effects of bright low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites on Vera C. Rubin Observatory and its Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). These include options for pointing the telescope to avoid satellites, laboratory investigations of bright trails on the Rubin Observatory LSST camera sensors, algorithms for correcting image artifacts caused by bright trails, experiments on darkening SpaceX Starlink satellites, and ground-based follow-up observations. The original Starlink v0.9 satellites are g ~ 4.5 mag, and the initial experiment "DarkSat" is g ~ 6.1 mag. Future Starlink darkening plans may reach g ~ 7 mag, a brightness level that enables nonlinear image artifact correction to well below background noise. However, the satellite trails will still exist at a signal-to-noise ratio ~ 100, generating systematic errors that may impact data analysis and limit some science. For the Rubin Observatory 8.4 m mirror and a satellite at 550 km, the full width at half maximum of the trail is about 3'' as the result of an out-of-focus effect, which helps avoid saturation by decreasing the peak surface brightness of the trail. For 48,000 LEOsats of apparent magnitude 4.5, about 1% of pixels in LSST nautical twilight images would need to be masked.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2024

Weather radar utility in hazard detection and response

Publicly accessible weather radar data have significant capabilities for meteorological measurements and predictions and, further, have the potential to measure nonmeteorological events that include smoke, ash, and debris plumes as well as explosions. The ability to identify and track nonmeteorological events can be of assistance in emergency response, hazard mitigation, and related activities in locations where radar coverage both exists and is recorded and accessible to the user. Here, in this study, events from multiple locations in the United States that are reported in news outlets are assessed using a manual inspection process of Level 2 weather radar data to identify anthropogenic and nonbiological returns. Explosive events are also identified, and a large high-altitude debris cloud from the intentional destruction of the SpaceX Starship is tracked across a wide area. Finally, future efforts using a machine learning model are discussed as a means of automating the process and potentially enabling near-real-time nonmeteorological event identification in the same areas where the data are accessible. Using weather radar data can be a valuable new tool for Department of Defense systems to aid in military awareness, and for interagency emergency response and forensic mission experts to consider national weather service data in their mission profiles. Radar data can be effective in detecting several common types of emergencies and inform and aid response personnel.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

NASA NTRS2006

Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) Demonstrations

U.S. space policy directs pursuit of commercial opportunities for providing transportation and other services low Earth orbit and beyond. COTS Project established to implement policy. COTS strategy: Phase 1) Assist industry with system development/demonstrations (COTS Demos); Phase 2) Procure commercial services for ISS logistics support. COTS Demonstrations competition completed in 10 months. Two industry partners selected for funded Space Act Agreements: 1) SpaceX & Rocketplane-Kistler; and 2) Unfunded Space Act Agreements in work with other competitors. COTS budget of $500 M thru 2010, with pay for performance milestone approach. Cargo flight demonstrations planned for 2008 and 2009: Crew flight demonstration options for 2011-2012. Commercial cargo transportation services potentially available as early as 2009-2010. Successful COTS partners may open new space markets and provide reliable, cost effective cargo and crew transportation services, a new era for commercial space.

Lindenmoyer, Allan↗

NASA NTRS2009

Low Cost Rapid Response Spacecraft, (LCRRS): A Research Project in Low Cost Spacecraft Design and Fabrication in a Rapid Prototyping Environment

The Low Cost Rapid Response Spacecraft (LCRRS) is an ongoing research development project at NASA Ames Research Center (ARC), Moffett Field, California. The prototype spacecraft, called Cost Optimized Test for Spacecraft Avionics and Technologies (COTSAT) is the first of what could potentially be a series of rapidly produced low-cost satellites. COTSAT has a target launch date of March 2009 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle. The LCRRS research system design incorporates use of COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf), MOTS (Modified Off The Shelf), and GOTS (Government Off The Shelf) hardware for a remote sensing satellite. The design concept was baselined to support a 0.5 meter Ritchey-Chretien telescope payload. This telescope and camera system is expected to achieve 1.5 meter/pixel resolution. The COTSAT team is investigating the possibility of building a fully functional spacecraft for $500,000 parts and $2,000,000 labor. Cost is dramatically reduced by using a sealed container, housing the bus and payload subsystems. Some electrical and RF designs were improved/upgraded from GeneSat-1 heritage systems. The project began in January 2007 and has yielded two functional test platforms. It is expected that a flight-qualified unit will be finished in December 2008. Flight quality controls are in place on the parts and materials used in this development with the aim of using them to finish a proto-flight satellite. For LEO missions the team is targeting a mission class requiring a minimum of six months lifetime or more. The system architecture incorporates several design features required by high reliability missions. This allows for a true skunk works environment to rapidly progress toward a flight design. Engineering and fabrication is primarily done in-house at NASA Ames with flight certifications on materials. The team currently employs seven Full Time Equivalent employees. The success of COTSATs small team in this effort can be attributed to highly cross trained engineering team. The engineers on the team are capable of functioning in two to three engineering disciplines which allows highly efficient interdisciplinary engineering collaboration. NASA Ames is actively proposing mission concepts to use the COTSAT platform to accomplish science. If the COTSAT team validates this approach, it will allow the possibility for remote sensing missions to produce a high science yield for minimal cost and reduced schedule. Another aim of this approach is to yield an accelerated pathway from a Phase A study to mission launch. Leaders in the aerospace industry have shown interest in this methodology. Several visits and tours have been given in the lab. Although the concept of low-cost development is initially met with skepticism from some within the prohibitive aerospace industry, the project's efforts have been highly praised for the accomplishments met within a limited time and budget. Overall the development has progressed tremendously well and the team is answering critical questions for current and future low-cost small satellite developments. COTSAT subsystems are not limited to a specific weight class and could be adapted to produce smaller platforms and to fit various launch vehicles.

Spremo, Stevan↗

NASA NTRS2009

Validation of PICA Ablation and Thermal-Response Model at Low Heat Flux

Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA) was the forebody heatshield material on the Stardust sample-return capsule and is also a primary candidate material for the Mars Science Lander (MSL), the Orion Crew Module, and the SpaceX Dragon vehicle. As part of the heatshield qualification for Orion, physical and thermal properties of virgin and charred PICA were measured, and an ablation and thermal response model was developed. We validated the model by comparing it with recession and temperature data from stagnation arcjet tests conducted over a wide range of stagnation heat flux of 107 to 1102 W/sq cm. The effect of orthotropic thermal conductivity was evident in the thermal response of the arcjet models. In general, model predictions compared well with the data; however, the uncertainty of the recession prediction was greatest for heat fluxes below 200 W/sq cm. More recent MSL testing focused on the low heat flux regime of 45 to 250 W/sq cm. The new results confirm the recession uncertainty, especially for pressures below 6 kPa. In this work we focus on improving the model predictions for MSL and Orion tests below 250 W/sq cm.

Milos, Frank S.↗

NASA NTRS2010

COTS/CRS: KSC Evolving Host Initiatives with Commercial Space Partners

NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office (C3PO) leads the agency's commercial efforts to stimulate United States private companies as the shuttle program comes to a close. Through the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, two companies, SpaceX and Orbital, were selected to demonstrate their ability to perform flights to the International Space Station. The Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) Project leverages off the COTS experience, and awarded these two private companies contracts to resupply the International Space Station after shuttle fly out. As a 2010 summer intern, I supported the COTS/CRS team in their team meetings, attended and contributed to project discussions and planning, and assisted in developing visual representations for the variety of processes and organizational endeavors required for the program to run smoothly. One aspect of the COTS/CRS program gives the involved private companies the opportunity to request available services from Kennedy Space Center (KSC); one of my projects included assisting in the development of a related Task Order Request (TOR) process. In addition, an integral part of the project was to maintain and enhance the team database for processing the variety of TORS. My experience in the project gave me great insight into the growing field of commercial space activities. The development of the TOR process involved coordinating representatives from a variety of backgrounds at KSC. A clear and concise visual representation of the TOR process in the form of a flow chart was necessary to successfully implement a task order request from one of NASA's commercial partners. The goals of the process charts were to communicate the team's ideas and foster a common thought process while at the same time allow the process to grow and evolve. It was critical that the requests from the private companies were addressed quickly and thoroughly as the process developed this summer is expected to have extensive future use.

Yohpe, Megan↗

NASA NTRS2010

Thermal Protection System (Heat Shield) Development - Advanced Development Project

The Orion Thermal Protection System (TPS) ADP was a 3 1/2 year effort to develop ablative TPS materials for the Orion crew capsule. The ADP was motivated by the lack of available ablative TPS's. The TPS ADP pursued a competitive phased development strategy with succeeding rounds of development, testing and down selections. The Project raised the technology readiness level (TRL) of 8 different TPS materials from 5 different commercial vendors, eventual down selecting to a single material system for the Orion heat shield. In addition to providing a heat shield material and design for Orion on time and on budget, the Project accomplished the following: 1) Re-invigorated TPS industry & re-established a NASA competency to respond to future TPS needs; 2) Identified a potentially catastrophic problem with the planned MSL heat shield, and provided a viable, high TRL alternate heat shield design option; and 3) Transferred mature heat shield material and design options to the commercial space industry, including TPS technology information for the SpaceX Dragon capsule.

Kowal, T. John↗

NASA NTRS2010

Cold Stowage Flight Systems

The International Space Station (ISS) provides a test bed for researchers to perform science experiments in a variety of fields, including human research, life sciences, and space medicine. Many of the experiments being conducted today require science samples to be stored and transported in a temperature controlled environment. NASA provides several systems which aide researchers in preserving their science. On orbit systems provided by NASA include the Minus Eighty Laboratory freezer for ISS (MELFI), Microgravity Experiment Research Locker Incubator (MERLIN), and Glacier. These freezers use different technologies to provide rapid cooling and cold stowage at different temperature levels on board ISS. Systems available to researchers during transportation to and from ISS are MERLIN, Glacier, and Coldbag. Coldbag is a passive cold stowage system that uses phase change materials. Details of these current technologies will be provided along with operational experience gained to date. With shuttle retirement looming, NASA has protected the capability to provide a temperature controlled environment during transportation to and from the ISS with the use of Glacier and Coldbags, which are compatible with future commercial vehicles including SpaceX's Dragon Capsule, and Orbital s Cygnus vehicle. This paper will discuss the capability of the current cold stowage hardware and how it may continue to support NASA s mission on ISS and in future exploration missions.

Campana, Sharon↗

NASA NTRS2011

NASA Mission Operations Directorate Preparations for the COTS Visiting Vehicles

With the retirement of the Space Shuttle looming, a series of new spacecraft is under development to assist in providing for the growing logistical needs of the International Space Station (ISS). Two of these vehicles are being built under a NASA initiative known as the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. These visiting vehicles ; Space X s Dragon and Orbital Science Corporation s Cygnus , are to be domestically produced in the United States and designed to add to the capabilities of the Russian Progress and Soyuz workhorses, the European Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) and the Japanese H-2 Transfer Vehicle (HTV). Most of what is known about the COTS program has focused on the work of Orbital and SpaceX in designing, building, and testing their respective launch and cargo vehicles. However, there is also a team within the Mission Operations Directorate (MOD) at NASA s Johnson Space Center working with their operational counterparts in these companies to provide operational safety oversight and mission assurance via the development of operational scenarios and products needed for these missions. Ensuring that the operational aspect is addressed for the initial demonstration flights of these vehicles is the topic of this paper. Integrating Dragon and Cygnus into the ISS operational environment has posed a unique challenge to NASA and their partner companies. This is due in part to the short time span of the COTS program, as measured from initial contract award until first launch, as well as other factors that will be explored in the text. Operational scenarios and products developed for each COTS vehicle will be discussed based on the following categories: timelines, on-orbit checkout, ground documentation, crew procedures, software updates and training materials. Also addressed is an outline of the commonalities associated with the operations for each vehicle. It is the intent of the authors to provide their audience with a better understanding of the mission assurance that MOD brings to commercial ventures to the ISS

Shull, Sarah A.↗

NASA NTRS2011

Methodology for Developing a Probabilistic Risk Assessment Model of Spacecraft Rendezvous and Dockings

In 2007 NASA was preparing to send two new visiting vehicles carrying logistics and propellant to the International Space Station (ISS). These new vehicles were the European Space Agency s (ESA) Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), the Jules Verne, and the Japanese Aerospace and Explorations Agency s (JAXA) H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV). The ISS Program wanted to quantify the increased risk to the ISS from these visiting vehicles. At the time, only the Shuttle, the Soyuz, and the Progress vehicles rendezvoused and docked to the ISS. The increased risk to the ISS was from an increase in vehicle traffic, thereby, increasing the potential catastrophic collision during the rendezvous and the docking or berthing of the spacecraft to the ISS. A universal method of evaluating the risk of rendezvous and docking or berthing was created by the ISS s Risk Team to accommodate the increasing number of rendezvous and docking or berthing operations due to the increasing number of different spacecraft, as well as the future arrival of commercial spacecraft. Before the first docking attempt of ESA's ATV and JAXA's HTV to the ISS, a probabilistic risk model was developed to quantitatively calculate the risk of collision of each spacecraft with the ISS. The 5 rendezvous and docking risk models (Soyuz, Progress, Shuttle, ATV, and HTV) have been used to build and refine the modeling methodology for rendezvous and docking of spacecrafts. This risk modeling methodology will be NASA s basis for evaluating the addition of future ISS visiting spacecrafts hazards, including SpaceX s Dragon, Orbital Science s Cygnus, and NASA s own Orion spacecraft. This paper will describe the methodology used for developing a visiting vehicle risk model.

Farnham, Steven J., II↗

NASA NTRS2011

Water Impact Prediction Tool for Recoverable Rockets

Reusing components from a rocket launch can be cost saving. NASA's space shuttle system has reusable components that return to the Earth and impact the ocean. A primary example is the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) that descends on parachutes to the Earth after separation and impacts the ocean. Water impact generates significant structural loads that can damage the booster, so it is important to study this event in detail in the design of the recovery system. Some recent examples of damage due to water impact include the Ares I-X First Stage deformation as seen in Figure 1 and the loss of the SpaceX Falcon 9 First Stage.To ensure that a component can be recovered or that the design of the recovery system is adequate, an adequate set of structural loads is necessary for use in failure assessments. However, this task is difficult since there are many conditions that affect how a component impacts the water and the resulting structural loading that a component sees. These conditions include the angle of impact with respect to the water, the horizontal and vertical velocities, the rotation rate, the wave height and speed, and many others. There have been attempts to simulate water impact. One approach is to analyze water impact using explicit finite element techniques such as those employed by the LS-Dyna tool [1]. Though very detailed, this approach is time consuming and would not be suitable for running Monte Carlo or optimization analyses. The purpose of this paper is to describe a multi-body simulation tool that runs quickly and that captures the environments a component might see. The simulation incorporates the air and water interaction with the component, the component dynamics (i.e. modes and mode shapes), any applicable parachutes and lines, the interaction of winds and gusts, and the wave height and speed. It is capable of quickly conducting Monte Carlo studies to better capture the environments and genetic algorithm optimizations to reproduce a flight.

Rooker, William↗