2017-8-1_stip_final-508ed

NASA Strategic Technology Investment Plan
Figure 10: Deep space habitat concept.
NASA is addressing key challenges within the habitat for maintaining the physical and mental
health of astronauts and detecting and diagnosing illness, cognitive/performance degradation,
or trauma. NASA is developing tools to model, understand, and predict radiation risk and
develop countermeasures and protection systems. NASA develops technologies that ensure
crew health and safety by protecting against spacecraft hazards and by providing for an
effective response should an accident occur. Specifically, NASA enhances sensors to monitor
air, water, and microbial environments; provides for fire detection, suppression, and recovery;
and enables remediation by providing the crew with the ability to clean the habitable
environment of the spacecraft in the event of an off-nominal situation. Each of these
technologies is critical to a successful mission that achieves its objectives and returns the
astronauts home safely.
Impact to NASA
Technologies within this focus area work together to enable NASA to successfully conduct
human missions into deep space and to Mars. These technologies will be incorporated in the
next generation of deep space vehicles after proven through ground and ISS testing to support
future development for Mars missions. These technologies will help decrease the mass and cost
of future missions while increasing the reliability and safety of all crewed missions.
Impact to Nation and Partners
Many of the international partners NASA is working with have identified these technologies as
instrumental to their own exploration plans. Several of the human health and human factor
technologies have applications in other transportation systems such as aviation, and other
Government agencies have identified partnership opportunities in these areas. From the
commercial perspective, several of these technologies encourage ambitious efforts to expand
low-Earth orbit operations and develop new space markets, including space resources.
Commercial companies with terrestrial applications identified some of these critical technologies
(such as brine processing, medical devices, and environmental sensors) as areas of interest.
12