Habitats Optimized for Missions of Exploration (HOME)

This project is a collaboration between multiple universities with the goal of developing new paradigms for the design of NASA’s deep-space habitats. We are focusing on two topics for increasing the ‘self-awareness’ of space habitats:

1. Root cause analysis of faults in the Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) and the Electrical Power System (EPS). We will be investigating the integration of a digital twin model with root cause analysis methods to enable context-based diagnosis of faults.

2. Uncertainty quantification in digital twins. For safety-critical systems, predictions of system health that account for uncertainties in a robust and efficient manner are deemed essential by NASA to safe-guard against failures. Our principal objective is to develop approaches for effectively quantifying and representing uncertainties in digital twins.

The long-term vision is to integrate these technologies within NASA’s space habitats to increase their autonomous capabilities and reduce the crew’s dependence on Earth-based mission control for operation and troubleshooting activities.