Earth Reliant
NASA’s current human exploration activities occur
in an Earth Reliant frame of operations on the ISS.
To begin to break these ties, NASA is leveraging
the space station as a test bed to demonstrate key
exploration capabilities and operations. Current NASA
missions are building on the Earth Reliant capabilities
to enable missions for the next decade. The agency
is also facilitating a robust commercial crew and
cargo transportation capability in LEO, stimulating
new markets and fostering an emerging commercial
space industry that will mature to support future
pioneering missions. As NASA transitions beyond
LEO and continues to pioneer space, our vision is that
private and public investments will sustain economic
activity in LEO and create benefits for Earth through
commercial supply and public and private demand.
The First Steps:
International Space Station (ISS)
NASA has begun the transition from exploration to
pioneering on the ISS. Occupied by an international crew
continuously since November 2, 2000, the station has
hosted more than 200 people from 17 countries, and is the
culmination of one of the largest and most complicated
international engineering efforts ever attempted.
The ISS is the only microgravity platform for the long-term testing of new
life support and crew health systems, advanced habitat modules, and other
technologies needed to decrease reliance on Earth. Over the next decade,
we will validate many of the capabilities needed to maintain a healthy and
productive crew in deep space. Currently manifested or planned experiments
and demonstrations include improved long-duration life support for
Mars missions, advanced fire safety equipment, next-generation spacesuit
technologies, high-data-rate communications, techniques to reduce logistics,
large deployable solar arrays, in-space additive manufacturing, advanced
exercise and medical equipment, radiation monitoring and shielding, humanrobotic operations, and autonomous crew operations.
Aboard the ISS, NASA and its partners also conduct targeted research to
improve our understanding of how humans adapt and function during
long-duration space travel. Current and planned risk-reducing investigations
include bone and muscle loss studies, understanding the effects of intracranial
pressure changes and fluid shifts, monitoring immune function and
14
Astronaut Scott
Kelly and cosmonaut
Mikhail Kornienko
have teamed up for
a one-year mission
to understand how
humans adjust to longduration microgravity,
bringing us one step
closer to Mars