Lessons Learned from Medical System Foundation Development for Long-Duration Lunar Orbit and Lunar Surface Missions

The Human Research Program (HRP) Exploration Medical Capability (ExMC) Element has been tasked with the development of Medical System Foundations for Level of Care IV for both short-duration lunar orbital missions and, subsequently, long-duration lunar orbital and surface operations missions. These Medical System Foundations serve as a framework to aid in early medical system design and mission planning.
The content of both Foundation models is similar, consisting of a concept of operations, functional decomposition, clinical content (medical conditions, capabilities, and resources), technical requirements (interface, non-functional, and functional), and traces between these components and to the NASA standards documents and parent-level (Program- and Vehicle habitat system-level) requirements. Additionally, the development of both Foundations employed systems engineering principles and a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) approach.
Throughout the development of these Foundations, ExMC has strived to improve the efficiency and robustness of its processes and to be more responsive to change (i.e., in design reference mission parameters and assumptions) and to stakeholders’ feedback. The most significant improvements made between the short- and long-duration Foundation models during this transformation process are the following:
• Replacement of the traditional document-based ConOps with a model-based ConOps according to MBSE principles, which facilitated more efficient understanding of the material and the consolidation of all relevant information into a centralized location.
• Utilization of an agile approach with tasks organized into sprints. This approach enabled solicitation of more frequent usability feedback from stakeholders, incorporation of more human factors reviews into the sprints, and more efficient tasking of team members.
This presentation will discuss the journey of developing both Foundation models, as well as the lessons learned and resulting improvements made between the Short- and Long-Duration models.