ROOM
66
Astronautics
W
atching the movie The Martian
recently I was captured by the
creativity demonstrated by two key
characters - the astronaut stranded
on Mars, played by Matt Damon, and the
astrodynamicist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL), played by Donald Glover.
The astronaut builds a greenhouse on the
red planet using all of the available material in a
totally different way from its intended use - the
production of water from hydrazine (rocket fuel)
or the redefinition of a communication protocol
with an old probe left on Mars from a previous
Pathfinder mission, for example. The JPL employee
redesigns the entire mission of the Hermes
spacecraft using a flyby of Earth to return to Mars
in a much shorter time.
The Hollywood adaptation of Andy Weir’s book
of the same name celebrates the bravery, humour
and ingenuity of the protagonists. It also reflects
very well the experiences and challenges of real
space exploration and the huge component of
the unknown and unplanned that can only be
overcome with flexibility and imagination.
System reliability is essential to the success of a
mission but the external environment is a source
of continuous discovery and surprises – otherwise
why would we call it ‘exploration? – and to cope
with this the system requires resilience.
While we do not yet have a greenhouse on
another planet, we do have a long list of creative
solutions to both big and small emergencies in
space, from the successful return to Earth of
Apollo 13, through to the complete redesign of
missions to ensure the accomplishment of the
objectives for the the European Retrievable Carrier
(EURECA) mission.
At the same time, when considering the
reliability of the system and the probability of
success it is not uncommon to hear about the
In both crewed and automated spaceflight, unique exploration missions and
routine services, humans conceptualise, develop, design, operate, use and
manage technology. Only by understanding this as a joint ‘human-tech’ effort can
the capabilities and limitations of both elements be leveraged most effectively for
reliable, robust and resilient operations, systems and infrastructure.
Alfio Mantineo
ESA/ESOC,
Darmstadt, Germany
Automated or human-
operated systems?
Space exploration from the human
dependability perspective
The 35 m diameter dish
antenna of ESA’s deep-
space tracking station at
New Norcia, Australia.
ESA
