McCann, R. S., & Spirkovska, L. (2005). Human Factors of Integrated Systems Health Management on Next-Generation Spacecraft. In Proceedings of First International Forum on Integrated System Health Engineering and Management in Aerospace, Nov. 7-10, Napa, CA.

Abstract

A shuttle crew’s ability to manage the health of the spacecraft systems is compromised by the limited capabilities of the onboard health management technologies, many of which date from the 1970s and 1980s. Most notably, the Caution and Warning system does little more than generate auditory alerts and fault messages in response to out-of-limit sensor readings. Today’s health management technologies have much more extensive capabilities that range from detecting off-nominal trends and data patterns to executing fault isolation and recovery procedures. On next-generation spacecraft, these technologies could be harnessed to replace the traditional Caution and Warning system with a decision and action support system that assists the crew with all aspects of real-time health management operations. We discuss several aspects of the design of such a system, including human-machine functional allocations; user interfaces to enable and support human-machine interaction, and methodologies for testing and evaluating collaborative operational concepts and associated user interfaces.