Critical Technology Determination for Future Human Space Flight

As the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) prepares to extend human presence throughout the solar system, technical capabilities must be developed to enable long duration flights to destinations such as near Earth asteroids, Mars, and extended stays on the Moon. As part of the NASA Human Spaceflight Architecture Team, a Technology Development Assessment Team has identified a suite of critical technologies needed to support this broad range of missions. Dialog between mission planners, vehicle developers, and technologists was used to identify a minimum but sufficient set of technologies, noting that needs are created by specific mission architecture requirements, yet specific designs are enabled by technologies. Further consideration was given to the re-use of underlying technologies to cover multiple missions to effectively use scarce resources. This suite of critical technologies is expected to provide the needed base capability to enable a variety of possible destinations and missions. This paper describes the methodology used to provide an architecture driven technology development assessment (technology pull), including technology advancement needs identified by trade studies encompassing a spectrum of flight elements and destination design reference missions.