In response to NASA epscor opportunity: FY 2021 cooperative agreement notice (can) rapid response research (R3), and within the scope of the commercial space capabilities office appendix b. Commercial…

This $99,999 cooperative agreement was awarded by NASA to the University of North Dakota (UND) Division of Research & Economic Development to conduct research on the usability of a commercially-designed extravehicular activity (EVA) space suit. The research aims to assess the suit's performance through human-centered testing methods, including measuring the work envelope and dexterity of research subjects performing simulated microgravity tasks. This study is being conducted in response to NASA's FY 2021 Cooperative Agreement Notice for Rapid Response Research, within the scope of the Commercial Space Capabilities Office's research request. UND has extensive experience managing federal research contracts and grants across disciplines including aerospace, energy, and engineering. The work leverages UND's expertise in advanced sensing technologies and supports NASA's goals for enabling commercial space activities.

In response to NASA epscor opportunity: FY 2021 cooperative agreement notice (can) rapid response research (R3), and within the scope of the commercial space capabilities office appendix b. Commercial space research request number csco-2021-02, the following research study of performance for commercial extravehicular space suit is proposed. With the proliferation of commercial spaceflight, commercial activities beyond tourism are set to become a normative utilization of space. These activities will require the use of similar risk mitigations that non-commercial space entities currently require, to include extravehicular activity (EVA) space suits. These suits are a complex system of systems which provide the wearer with a semiflexible enclosure and a self-contained life support system allowing them to perform tasks in a microgravity or other inhospitable environments such as a non-earth planetary surface. The research proposed herein looks to ascertain the usability aspects of the final frontier design (FFD) commercially designed EVA space suit through the utilization of human-centered usability methods and techniques to include humans-in-the-loop (hitl) testing. Anthropomorphic work envelope data collection will be performed within two conditions human research subject without the pressurized outer garment, and human research subject with the pressurized outer garment with a delta p of 3.5PSID. In both conditions, the subject will be in a standing position equivalent to tasks performed in microgravity. Further data collection will include the use of an activity board device, which includes various connections, switches, and other activities equivalent to tasks performed within microgravity to supplement work envelope data with that of actual tasks and include dexterity of the EVA space suit gloves as part of the usability of the suit. This research is being conducted at a standard atmosphere and 1-g environment and will utilize a three-dimension full body motion capture system to measure and compare the data between both conditions while the research subject is performing the activity board tasks. Research subjects will be selected within the range of allowable operator height and weight of the FFD EVA space suit and within the 5TH and 95TH percentile for stature as required by NASA man-systems integration standards volume 1 section 3 (NASA-STD-3000). The research proposed herein will also utilize UND human spaceflight lab (HSL) standards and processes (including internal institutional review board) for testing with human subjects as well as any NASA testing procedures that its standards and processes reference, such as NASA STD-3001 NASA space flight human-system standard and those of other U.S. Agencies such as the FDA and NIH.