Astronaut Kinematics and Injury Risk for Piloted Lunar Landings and Launches While Standing

During future lunar missions, astronauts may be required to pilot vehicles while standing, and the associated kinematic and injury response is not well understood. In this study we used human body modeling to predict unsuited astronaut kinematics and injury risk for piloted lunar launches and landings in the standing posture. Three pulses (2-5 g; 10–150 ms rise times) were applied in 10 directions (vertical; ± 10-degree offsets) for a total of 30 simulations. Across all simulations, motion envelopes were computed to quantify displacement of the astronaut’s head (max 9.0 cm forward, 7.0 cm backward, 2.1 cm upward, 7.3 cm downward, 2.4 cm lateral) and arms (max 25 cm forward, 35 cm backward, 15 cm upward, 20 cm downward, 20 cm lateral). All head, neck, lumbar, and lower extremity injury metrics were within NASA’s tolerance limits, except tibia compression forces (0–1543 N upper tibia; 0–1482 N lower tibia; tolerance—1350 N) and revised tibia index (0.04–0.58 upper tibia; 0.03–0.48 lower tibia; tolerance—0.43) for the 2.7 g/150 ms pulse. Pulse magnitude and duration contributed over 80% to the injury metric values, whereas loading direction contributed less than 3%. Overall, these simulations suggest piloting a lunar lander vehicle in the standing posture presents a low risk of injury to the astronaut, although risk of tibia injury is potentially outside NASA’s acceptance limits and warrants further investigation.