UC Berkeley

Design practices and tools for human exploration missions have evolved in concert with mission complexity over the past half century of the space age. As collective thought turns toward the exploration of Mars and of the Moon, such as through the Artemis Program, technologies new and old have been proposed to address challenges in astronautics. However, the coordination of these challenges has lagged behind the advances of technologies themselves. Previous mission design tools limited users to choosing between hard-coded options. Yet, technologies with potential applications to space are rapidly emerging from fields outside of astronautics, such as synthetic biology. One of NASA's Space Technology Grand Challenges is bridging the space sciences and biological engineering communities. This drives our development of echusOverlook (eO), an open-source Python library that captures the feasible mission design space, standardizes the definition of mission components, and democratizes the technology selection process. Here we begin by outlining the echusOverlook software in the context of other mission design suites. We then outline the feedback from a preliminary consultation with a group of mission design specialists which is then used to develop initial user-stories and design specifications. We then privide an initial demonstration of the software package capabilities in terms of technoeconomic analysis and simulation methods. Finally, we take steps to outline a roadmap for future software development. However, input from a wider audience is needed to create a tool that can address the needs of the community. We invite all interested parties to send feedback or get in touch to please fill out this brief survey: https://forms.gle/xkXppqnhTJ9mhGVX8.