Radiation exposure is one of the greatest threats to the performance and success of human and robotic deep space and Mars missions. The need for radiation mitigation spans human and robotic science, research, design, development, applications, and operations. It crosses discipline and service capabilities, and permeates nearly all NASA technology area roadmaps. The “system” of radiation mitigation is yet to be formally defined, but in one form may take a multi-pronged, multi-domain operational solution perspective involving: a) forecasting and prediction, b) materials, parts, components selection, c) crew selection, pharmacology, and countermeasures, and c) inflight shielding procedures. In human spaceflight, this perspective is bounded by needed solutions to mitigate negative human health responses guided by ethics and good engineering practice.
If each “prong” acts independently, it is significantly difficult to determine if when in combination they will result in an effective, coordinated, resourceful solution to radiation mitigation. Variability of statistical treatment, observations, forecasts, and design conceptualization and requirements, and challenges associated with various scales of independent systems and their individual approaches, independent organizations and funding paths, and cultural and programmatic variations, create potential for breeding significant risk and uncertainty, and undesirable cost, robustness, reliability, etc.
We can thus pose the following questions:
- What is the radiation mitigation “system”?
- What are the linkages and contributions of each subsystem, factor, component, etc. to the whole
- What are our knowledge gaps and are they leading technology approaches?
- Is there a specific, measurable goal of the system? How do we know when we’re “there”?
- How do we derive the radiation mitigation success criteria across the contributing domains?
- How do we transform fundamental research to application and operations?
Finally, we must ultimately ask, “Do we currently have and need a complete, holistic, systematic approach to “sufficiently” protect crew and assets from radiation?”. Creating a collaboratory framework that will meet NASA’s critical need to enable an integrated, multidisciplinary, end-to-end, systematic plan and strategy to mitigate radiation effects for deep space human missions by utilizing a System of Systems approach is thus highly desirable. Description of a preliminary framework addressing a holistic system perspective in areas including space weather, materials, parts and components, and human systems will be presented. Ultimately, the System of Systems approach will breed unique capabilities and solutions from the integration of and collaboration within and across traditionally “independent” human and robotic domains, and disciplines. This will enable an end-to-end view of processes to produce workable solutions with consistent success criteria to help guide smart, logically sequenced research, decisions, and investments.
Modeling , Radiation Effects (e.g., SEE, TID, DDD) , Radiation
