The NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) Review Board was briefed on the results of the “Examination of Time-Triggered Ethernet in the Artemis Architecture” engineering assessment for the Gateway Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) on September 30th, 2021. HALO will orbit the Moon and provide vital support for a long-term human return to the lunar surface, as well as a staging point for deep space exploration. The Assessment team was led by Bob Hodson and Omar Torres of the NESC Avionics Technical Discipline Team (TDT) and consisted of subject matter experts from four NASA Centers. The primary charter was formulated from a request from the Gateway Program Manager to evaluate the architecture and fault containment and reliability of the triplicated time-critical network used for HALO and the other vehicles comprising the Lunar Outpost. The NASA Ames Intelligent Systems Division contribution was provided by Rick Alena, who was tasked with analysis of the various vehicle-to-vehicle interfaces including Orion and the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE). The level of fault tolerance, identification of the fault containment regions, failure modes, and effects and other details such as communication and camera subsystems were evaluated and provided in a final report. A briefing to the Gateway Program is pending approval of the assessment by the Board.
BACKGROUND: The NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) is a NASA independent technical advisory committee and team that performs various assessment functions for NASA Programs, focusing on areas such as new vehicle design and failure analysis. Specifically, the NESC Avionics Technical Discipline team was asked by the Gateway Program to assess the scope and risks of the Lunar Outpost time-deterministic networks responsible for critical flight control. Funding is provided through the NESC for these studies. Numerous technical disciplines are represented in each of the TDTs, which include areas such as structures and propulsion.
NASA PROGRAM FUNDING: NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC)