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Since its formation in 2007, the NASA Human Research Program’s (HRP) mission has been to protect the health and performance of astronauts as they explore beyond low Earth orbit. The HRP helps enable exploration spaceflight through a focused program of research that leads to the development and delivery of solutions to protect human health and performance during and after these missions. This research is conducted primarily in ground analogs of the spaceflight environment and on the International Space Station (ISS). Over the last 3 years, NASA has undergone transformative changes with the flight of Artemis I, the formation of the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations Program, commercial flights to the ISS, and collaboration with new international partners participating in human spaceflight. The HRP has embraced these new opportunities and is collaborating on all these fronts to collect biomedical research data. Artemis I marked the arrival of NASA’s new human spaceflight exploration missions. NASA established the Moon to Mars Program Office to design a roadmap for the exploration of the lunar surface and the journey beyond to Mars. The HRP has a critical role in conducting research and delivering technologies that will lead to solutions that protect human health and performance, and is working closely with the Moon to Mars Office to ensure these deliverables are ready in time to support their strategy. The HRP is also developing the partnership strategies required to support these deliverables. Commercial space flights, both free flyer and suborbital missions and private astronaut missions to the ISS, are providing broader opportunities and more subjects to characterize spaceflight-induced changes to the human system and to test countermeasures. To better use these opportunities to achieve its mission, the HRP has been working to understand the commercial spaceflight companies’ needs and then partnering with them on aspects of mutual interest. In addition, the HRP continues to engage in long-standing relationships with its international partners through the International Space Life Sciences Working Group and other joint international groups. The HRP is interested in sharing its knowledge and collaborating on projects of mutual interest with new countries that are developing capabilities for human spaceflight. The next 10 years will shape how humanity partners on exploration missions to Mars, and the HRP is committed to enabling and developing collaborative strategies with commercial and international partners to keep humans safe and productive as they explore longer and further into space.

This submission includes 11 presentations prepared by NASA for the Trilateral Safety & Mission Assurance (SMA) Conference from June 24-26th at the ESA Centre for Earth Observation. These presentations encompass various safety & mission assurance topics focused on the conference themes of lunar exploration, space sustainability, new commercial partners & challenges, digital engineering, and the assurance of new technologies. These presentations will be shared amongst an international community of SMA practitioners & leadership to promote mutual dialogue on initiatives & challenges of SMA in an evolving spaceflight field.

This presentation gives an overview of thermal technology development efforts at the Johnson Space Center (JSC), NASA’s center for human spaceflight. The presentation begins with an overview of NASA’s current human spaceflight programs, followed by the various JSC organizations that support thermal technologies. Lastly, thermal capability gaps are described along with current development efforts that are part of the roadmap to close those gaps.

This presentation gives an overview of thermal technology development efforts at the Johnson Space Center (JSC), NASA’s center for human spaceflight. The presentation begins with an overview of NASA’s current human spaceflight programs, followed by the various JSC organizations that support thermal technologies. Lastly, thermal capability gaps are described along with current development efforts that are part of the roadmap to close those gaps.

We confirm the planetary nature of TOI-5344 b as a transiting giant exoplanet around an M0-dwarf star. TOI-5344 b was discovered with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite photometry and confirmed with ground-based photometry (the Red Buttes Observatory 0.6 m telescope), radial velocity (the Habitable-zone Planet Finder), and speckle imaging (the NN-Explore Exoplanet Stellar Speckle Imager). TOI-5344 b is a Saturn-like giant planet (ρ = 0.80 +0.17−0.15g cm−3) with a planetary radius of 9.7 ± 0.5 R⊕ (0.87 ± 0.04 RJup) and a planetary mass of 135+17−18 M⊕ (0.42+0.05−0.06MJup). It has an orbital period of 3.792622+0.000010−0.000010 days and an orbital eccentricity of 0.06 +0.07−0.04. We measure a high metallicity for TOI-5344 of [Fe/H] = 0.48 ± 0.12, where the high metallicity is consistent with expectations from formation through core accretion. We compare the metallicity of the M-dwarf hosts of giant exoplanets to that of M-dwarf hosts of nongiants (≲8 R⊕). While the two populations appear to show different metallicity distributions, quantitative tests are prohibited by various sample caveats.

A reliable source of dry, high-pressure oxygen is needed for future lunar missions to support nominal and contingency operations on the Surface Habitat (SH) and the Pressurized Rover (PR) in future Gateway missions. A High-Pressure Oxygen Dryer (HPOD) is needed to support potential use of primary oxygen generation systems, the High-Pressure Oxygen Generation Assembly (HPOGA) and the Skyre EOC, by drying the wet oxygen exiting the systems. The objective of this paper is to perform an architecture trade study and market survey of options to dry a continuous stream of 45°C, 4000 PSIG oxygen containing ~ 500 ppm H2O (dew point 52°C) down to < 7 ppm H2O (dew point -15°C) for both the 28-day and 365-day timeframe. A total of seven different technologies were identified as potential dryer candidates during the market survey, relying on one of three principles, adsorption, filtration, and cooling. During the sizing and trade study, it was found that several of the technologies aren’t sufficient for the extreme conditions and were eliminated. In the end, a single-use throw away adsorption bed traded the best for single mission use, while a pressure regenerative adsorption bed traded the best for a multiple mission scenario. The results of this analysis are intended to influence future design work for high-pressure oxygen drying applications.

Wildfires in the United States have been increasing significantly in both frequency and size in recent decades, requiring unprecedented resource and communication efficiency on the part of wildfire management organizations. However, while the methodology and technology to combat wildfires have improved, the connectivity infrastructure in rural regions of the country is either incompatible with newer technology or altogether non-existent. Due to this, many modern communication methods are rendered useless in areas where a connection is needed most, complicating the overall fire management procedure. To improve communication and logistics between responders on the front lines and headquarters, a team of NASA research associates has developed the schematic for a rapidly deployable mobile ad-hoc internet-enabled Wi-Fi network that can bring stable internet access to any desired area. This paper contains the testing and analysis of the Ad-Hawk project conceived in the summer of 2022 and developed in the summer of 2023.

The Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign is one of the most ambitious and complex exoplanet scientific exploration missions currently underway. With the participation of NASA, ESA, and a large number of industry partners, MSR aims to bring back Martian rock and atmosphere samples with the goal of answering key questions about Mars’ geological, climatological, and (potentially) biological evolution. To accomplish this ambitious goal, the campaign relies on three distinct flight elements and a ground element. The Earth Return Orbiter (ERO) mission that would host the Capture, Containment, and Return System (CCRS) is the last element of the trio. The mission would capture the orbiting sample in low Mars orbit (launched into orbit by another mission), contain it and return it to Earth, landing it at the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR). The CCRS continues its development. Since its early architecture, several changes were adopted by the project in order to improve overall payload efficiency and reduce mass. CCRS is currently on track to achieve the next milestone, Critical Design Review, expected in late 2024. This paper will discuss the CCRS design, how the current architecture contributes to an improved mission baseline, and the next critical steps of the mission towards its launch.

The purpose of this field test and corresponding report is to evolve the lunar surface EVA concept of operations and hardware via developmental testing. This report compiles and summarizes the goals, infrastructure, test configuration, conclusions, and recommendations from the JETT3 field test. These insights are intended to inform future integrated testing efforts and broader Artemis campaign development activities.

There are many opportunities in executing the ambitious Moon-to-Mars efforts through an integrated architecture. NASA addresses this in its Moon-to-Mars Strategy and Objectives Development2 document (hereafter referred to as the M2M Strategy). Many of these opportunities involve establishing a system engineering framework that can support the breadth of necessary program and system contributions. By applying these needs to nearer-term lunar development, NASA will be instituting the process, procedures, and techniques needed to enable longer-term Mars goals and more. Some of the challenges being addressed in the M2M Strategy are associated with the architecture definition and include broad/changing goals, funding, and external pressures/influences. This document and the methodology outlined for architecture definition have been crafted to contend with these using an iterative and adaptable framework. The primary purpose of the Architecture Definition Document (ADD) is to capture the methodology, organization, and decomposition necessary to translate the broad objectives outlined in the M2M Strategy into functions and use cases that can be allocated to implementable programs and projects. Inherent in this process will be the need to communicate the long-term vision, maintain traceability to responsible parties, and iterate on the architectural implementation as innovations and solutions develop. This document will be updated and improved in conjunction with the Architecture Concept Review (ACR) which will be held annually to help unify the Agency and to get buy-in and input from across the Agency on the human exploration architecture. The annual nature of the process provides the opportunity to continually incorporate new developments in technologies and new partnerships, whether they be with industry, the U.S. Government, international entities, or academia.

The 2022 Research and Technology Annual Report represents what is hopefully the “new normal” for portfolio execution. The portfolio took advantage of the best features of the virtual work environment with collaborations across the nation without any geographical constraints. This allowed key partnerships between NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and other NASA centers, other government agencies, industry, and academia. Also, because there were no longer any constraints on laboratory and test capabilities, we were able to make significant progress with hands-on technology development, fabrication and testing that is critical to validating the efficacy of advanced technology.

The recent accelerated growth in space-related research and development activities makes the near-term need for long-term extraterrestrial habitats evident. Such habitats must operate under continuous disruptive conditions arising from extreme environments like meteoroid impacts, extreme temperature fluctuations, galactic cosmic rays, destructive dust, and seismic events. Loss of air or atmospheric leakage from a habitat poses safety challenges that demand proper attention. Such leakage may arise from micro-meteoroid impacts, crack growth, bolt/rivet loosening, and seal deterioration. In this paper, leakage estimation in deep space habitats is posed as an inverse problem. A forward pressure-based dynamical model is formulated for atmospheric leakage. Experiments are performed on a small-scaled pressure chamber where different leakage scenarios are emulated and corresponding pressure values are measured. An exponentially-weighted adaptively-refined search (EWARS) algorithm is developed and validated for the inverse problem of real-time leakage estimation. It is demonstrated that the proposed methodology can achieve real-time estimation and tracking of constant and variable leaks with accuracy.

We carry out a population study of magnetized radio filaments in the Galactic centre using MeerKAT data by focusing on the spacing between the filaments that are grouped. The morphology of a sample of 43 groupings containing 174 magnetized radio filaments are presented. Many grouped filaments show harp-like, fragmented cometary tail-like, or loop-like structures in contrast to many straight filaments running mainly perpendicular to the Galactic plane. There are many striking examples of a single filament splitting into two prongs at a junction, suggestive of a flow of plasma along the filaments. Spatial variations in spectral index, brightness, bending, and sharpening along the filaments indicate that they are evolving on a 105−6-yr time-scale. The mean spacings between parallel filaments in a given grouping peaks at ∼16 arcsec. We argue by modeling that the filaments in a grouping all lie on the same plane and that the groupings are isotropically oriented in 3D space. One candidate for the origin of filamentation is interaction with an obstacle, which could be a compact radio source, before a filament splits and bends into multiple filaments. In this picture, the obstacle or sets the length scale of the separation between the filaments. Another possibility is synchrotron cooling instability occurring in cometary tails formed as a result of the interaction of cosmic ray driven Galactic centre outflow with obstacles such as stellar winds. In this picture, the mean spacing and the mean width of the filaments are expected to be a fraction of a parsec, consistent with observed spacing.

This work investigates the use of a star tracker that senses star light in the short wave infra-red wavelengths, specifically at the photometric H-band. The number of stars available for tracking and the corresponding photometric H-band magnitude is presented using information derived from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) catalog. The probability of observing at least four stars in the star tracker’s field of view (FOV) at a given H-band magnitude or brighter is also presented. Finally, a notional short wave infra-red (SWIR) star tracker design is presented using the parameters calculated for the expected number of stars observed at the corresponding magnitudes in the photometric H-band. The results for the SWIR star tracker indicate the potential for a reduced FOV as compared to the visible wavelengths and relaxed star magnitude sensing requirements.

To tell the story of Langley's humans in Space capabilities

This handbook is the companion document to NPR 7120.5F, NASA Space Flight Program and Project Management Requirements. It represents the accumulation of knowledge on managing program and projects derived from NASA’s human, robotic, and scientific missions. It incorporates the “corporate knowledge” for existing and future NASA space flight programs and projects, including NASA’s Artemis missions to establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon through collaboration with commercial and international partners, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) mission, and NASA’s robotic missions on Mars. The practices discussed have evolved as a function of NASA’s core values of safety, integrity, teamwork, excellence, and inclusion, and may also prove a resource for other agencies, the private sector, and academia. The knowledge gained from the Agency’s victories and defeats, including the checks and balances and initiatives to better control cost and risk, provides a foundation for continuing an exciting and healthy space program. This handbook provides implementation guidance for NPR 7120.5F and includes the changes and updates to key procedural requirements in NPR 7120.5F since NPR 7120.5E. The goal of the NPR requirements is to ensure programs and projects are developed and successfully executed in the most cost-effective and efficient manner possible. This handbook provides context, rationale, and explanation to facilitate the application of requirements and to pass on some of the hard-won best practices and lessons learned.

Many of NASA’s missions would not be possible if it were not for the investments made in research advancements and technology development efforts. The technologies developed at Marshall Space Flight Center contribute to NASA’s strategic array of missions through technology development and accomplishments. This annual Research and Technology Report features brief write-ups from the scientists, researchers, and technologists of Marshall Space Flight Center who are working these enabling technology efforts, which are facilitating NASA’s ability to fulfill the ambitious goals of innovation, exploration, and discovery.

Objective: Investigate the effects on human performance as a function of scheduling task complexity for novice schedulers creating spaceflight timelines. Background: Future astronauts will be expected to self-schedule, yet will not be experts in creating timelines that meet complex constraints inherent to spaceflight operations. Method: Conducted a within-subject experiment to measure scheduling efficiency, effectiveness, workload and situation awareness while varying scheduling task complexity factors, namely number of constraints and types of constraints. Results: Fifteen participants completed various scheduling problems. Performance differences were identified between the independent variables. There was a main effect due to the number of constraints and type of constraint for efficiency, effectiveness, and workload. Significant interactions were observed in situation awareness and workload for certain types of constraints. Results also suggest that a lower number of constraints may be manageable by novice schedulers when compared to scheduling activities without constraints. Conclusion: Results suggest that novice schedulers performance decreases with high number of constraints and future scheduling aids may have to be targeted to type of constraint. Application: Knowledge on the effect of scheduling task complexity will help design scheduling systems that will enable self-scheduling for future astronauts. It will also inform other domains that conduct complex scheduling, such as nursing and manufacturing.

This paper presents the results of the measurement uncertainty analysis that was performed on the aero-thermal characteristics of the 6- by 9-Foot Icing Research Tunnel (IRT) at the NASA Glenn Research Center. The engineering judgments and statistical methods used to determine the elemental uncertainties are described. Instrumentation uncertainty was quanti�ed using MANTUS (Measurement Analysis Tool for Uncertainty in Systems) and instrument speci�cation sheets. The Monte Carlo method was used to propagate systematic components of uncertainty in order to quantify the uncertainty of the Variables of Interest (VOI). A detailed description of the Monte Carlo method and the MANTUS tool can be found in the Uncertainty Analysis of the NASA Glenn 8x6 Supersonic Wind Tunnel report [1]. Detailed uncertainty results for test section airspeed and temperature as well as other variables of interest are described within this document.

The NASA Orbital Debris Program Office (ODPO) develops, maintains, and updates orbital debris environmental models, such as the NASA Orbital Debris Engineering Model (ORDEM), to support satellite designers and operators by estimating the risk from orbital debris impacts on their vehicles in orbit. Updates to ORDEM utilize the most recent validated datasets from radar, optical, and in situ sources to provide estimates of the debris flux as a function of size, material density, impact speed, and direction along a mission orbit. On-going efforts within the NASA ODPO to update the next version of ORDEM include a new parameter that highly affects the damage risk – shape. Shape can be binned by material density and size to better understand the damage assessments on spacecraft. The in situ and laboratory research activities at the NASA ODPO are focused on cataloging and characterizing fragments from a laboratory hypervelocity-impact test using a high-fidelity, mock-up satellite, DebriSat, in controlled and instrumented laboratory conditions. DebriSat is representative of present-day, low Earth orbit satellites, having been constructed with modern spacecraft materials and techniques. The DebriSat fragment ensemble provides a variety of shapes, bulk densities, and dimensions. Fragments down to 2 mm in size are being characterized by their physical and derived properties. A subset of fragments is being analyzed further in NASA’s Optical Measurement Center (OMC) using broadband, bidirectional reflectance measurements to provide insight into the optical-based NASA Size Estimation Model. Additionally, pre-impact spectral measurements on a subset of DebriSat materials were acquired for baseline material characterization. This paper provides an overview of DebriSat, the status of the project, and ongoing fragment characterization efforts within the OMC.

This work is motivated by NASA plans to conduct welding experiments on the ISS. It is expected that deployment of welding and additive manufacturing technologies in the space environment has the potential to revolutionise how orbiting platforms are designed, manufactured, and assembled. However, the structure, composition and quality of a weld is extremely dependent on the environment and can be difficult to control in space. Shielding gases would also be tough to manage as gases behave differently in zero gravity and airless environments. Additional points of concern are related to the spatter and sparks dynamics in space. Therefore, there is a need for a more basic understanding of welding processes by computational modelling. To provide such an insight we developed state of art models of the ARC torch, droplet detachment and transfer, and the melt pool build up using magnetohydrodynamics approximation and level set method for two-phase liquid metal/-gas flow modelling. Two finite element models were built using 2D axisymmetric geometry in COMSOL Multiphysics®: (i) stationary model of the ARC torch and (ii) dynamical model of droplet detachment and transfer. Both models demonstrate reasonable agreement with earlier experimental observations and high sensitivity to the temperature dependence of the thermophysical parameters on the system materials. The models were used to provide physical insight into ARC welding in various environments and geometries. It was shown, in particular, that there is a significant probability of gas bubbles trapping in the meltpool and a possibility of unbounded wondering of sparks in the welding chamber in zero gravity. In addition, we estimated metal evaporation rate that may be hazardous in the confined environment of the ISS. These issues raise concern of quality of the weld and safety for ISS applications.

This document provides a summary of the data products from the POCO graphite Iso-Q run from AHF 348. POCO graphite is an UNCLASSIFIED material, and therefore this experimental dataset is being considered for public release as thermal response code validation exercise.

For many important classes of Mod-Sim problems, even quantum computing will not enable accurate predictions/computation vis-à-vis the real world due to boundary/initial condition shortfalls in terms of both range of parameters and requisite amplitudes/coverage. The Mod-Sim community needs to consider going forward the knowability of initial and boundary conditions.

Many of NASA’s missions would not be possible if it were not for the investments made in research advancements and technology development efforts. The technologies developed at Marshall Space Flight Center contribute to NASA’s strategic array of missions through technology development and accomplishments. This annual Research and Technology Report features brief write-ups from the scientists, researchers, and technologists of Marshall Space Flight Center who are working these enabling technology efforts, which are facilitating NASA’s ability to fulfill the ambitious goals of innovation, exploration, and discovery.

Collection of technology development project abstracts for STMD's technology development projects in NASA Innovative and Advanced Concepts (NIAC), Game-Changing Development (GCD), Small Spacecraft Technologies (SST) and Flight Opportunities (FO) programs.

The International Space Station (ISS) uses Orbital Replacement Units (ORU’s) to repair failures on orbit. Using ORU’s reduces the crew time required to repair failures, but several copies of each ORU must be stored on ISS to ensure system availability. A typical ORU contains many components and has significant mass, but each ORU can repair only a single component failure. A full set of the ORU internal components could repair many different failures. Lower level assembly or component repair should reduce total spares mass. Successful electronics repair experiments were conducted on ISS. However, implementing component level repair would require a significant effort. The systems must be designed so they can be repaired during a mission, considering component layout and accessibility. The repair procedures must be developed and repair facilities, tools, and diagnostic and test instruments provided. Tracing a fault to a component is much more difficult than isolating it to an ORU. Replacing a component is much more difficult than replacing an ORU. Some problems with lower level repair are discussed. The mass savings of lower level repair will not save as much launch cost as before since launch cost has recently been reduced by an order of magnitude. Most system failures are not component failures that can be fixed by replacing a component but are due to system level problems. Repair and maintenance should be planned as part of an overall maintainability design. The risk that a lower level repair will fail is considerably greater than when using ORUs. With modern high reliability packaged systems, failure diagnosis and repair has become a lost art. However, diagnosis and repair data from the 1960’s show that increasing complexity often causes much longer diagnosis and repair times and may prevent successful repair. Increasing complexity by using lower level repair directly increases system cost, failure rate, crew time for repair, and the risk of an unrepairable system failure.

The United States National Space Policy provides guidance and directives for U.S. Government agencies to purchase commercial space services and capabilities to the maximum extent practical. In alignment with this guidance, NASA is exploring potential industry partnerships to leverage current or planned commercial space communication and navigation infrastructure to provide services to NASA user missions in the mid-2020s. Leveraging commercial infrastructure and reducing NASA’s reliance on government-owned and operated infrastructure should yield substantial development and operations cost savings. Additionally, the commercial services market will offer NASA a variety of service offerings at competitive prices, while simultaneously allowing NASA to benefit from commercial best practices. Under Appendix G of the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP-2) Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), NASA awarded contracts to eight study vendors in May 2019 to investigate the feasibility of applying commercial services concepts to the NASA user mission community. The studies, managed by NASA Glenn Research Center, were completed in October 2019 and detailed ten study topic areas, three of which included: service provider interoperability, user terminal interoperability, and commercial services concept of operations. This report provides a summary of the significant (non-proprietary) findings and recommendations relating to those study areas from the BAA study vendors.

This a report on JAXA’s Kibo Robot Programing Challenge (RPC) Checkout activity which took place on 2020-05-21. This activity is an on-orbit test for the upcoming competition organized by JAXA and to be ran by September 2020. It aimed to check the multiple aspects of the operation of Bumble in support of this competition. The activity had three primary objectives: a) verification of four different positions to be visited during the competition, namely Start Position, P1, P2, and P3, b) demonstration of Bumble autonomously moving from the Start Position to P3 without keep-in/keep-out zones and c) demonstration of Bumble autonomously moving from the Start Position to P3 with JAXA’s defined keep-in/keep-out zones. The report emphasizes the confirmation of JAXA’s previously calculated and commanded coordinates for each position and the Astrobee Facilities Team (AFT) estimation of new coordinates in case those coordinates did not match JAXA’s desired target positions per ground and crew procedures. Four estimated coordinates are proposed and various suggestions on operation procedures are given to improve the maneuverability of Bumble during the actual day of the competition.

Obtaining observational data to inform the science of future missions focused on Earth-like exoplanets is of prime importance for NASA Planetary Science and Astrobiology. However, Earth observations as a proxy for an exoplanet is an area of interdivisional research not well captured by existing NASA programs. To accommodate this, we propose adding Earth to the list of planets allowable by NASA Planetary Science Division’s objectives and adding Earth observation to the cruise phase of planetary probes. A specific research investigation would be a spacecraft whose goal would be to characterize Earth as an exoplanet proxy — a Pale Blue Dot Explorer. Such a mission’s objective would be to monitor the habitability and biological signatures of Earth in reflected light over broad wavelengths and phase angles.

This presentation is a summary of the Exploration EVA System Concept of Operations for the EVA Exploration Workshop.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is embarking on an exciting evolution in human exploration and spaceflight. Space Policy Directive (SPD) 1 provides the overarching narrative for returning humans to the Moon and then to Mars. We are challenged to “Lead an innovative and sustainable program with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system and to bring back to Earth new knowledge and opportunities. Beginning with missions beyond low Earth orbit, the United States will lead the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations…” Here we explore some of the key technical challenges that this new era of human exploration brings with a focus on the challenges and opportunities in the structural dynamics discipline.

The Orion Optical Navigation System, which is designed to perform the navigation which will allow the crew to return safely to Earth in the event of a permanent loss of communications with the ground, has been matured through analysis and testing. This paper will detail the extensive tests and analysis that have gone into fleshing out the performance of the system in the face of numerous constraints placed on the optical navigation system.

The InSight mission landed on the surface of Mars on November 26th, 2018. The InSight system performance met all design requirements, although several performance metrics fell near the boundaries of the predictions. The peak deceleration was high, the overall timeline was short, and the landing site was uprange and crossrange from the target. This paper describes the reconstruction of the entry, descent, and landing trajectory and atmosphere. The approach utilizes a Kalman filter to blend sensor data to obtain the vehicle trajectory. The aerodynamic database is used in combination with the sensed accelerations to obtain estimates of the atmosphere-relative state, which in turn is used to derive the free-stream atmospheric conditions during entry, until the time of parachute deployment. The results indicate that the reconstructed atmosphere was approximately 1σbelow the preflight atmosphere. Analysis of the reconstructed vehicle attitude angles indicate that the aerodynamic lift was oriented downward at entry. The vehicle developed a roll rate during entry, which directed a component of the lift to the north. The low density and aerodynamic lift direction are determined to be the primary causes of the high deceleration, short timeline, and location of the landing site relative to the target.

The presentation will introduce topics of note regarding CCS status for the Earth Science Constellation (ESC) Mission Operations Working Group (MOWG).