Conquering Logistics in Space

For more than 25 years, Booz Allen has been involved in the design and the assembly of the International Space Station (ISS). From the early Space Station Freedom days to the present-day ISS, our systems engineers have been engaged.

Assembly is one thing, but the job of maintaining the ISS is ongoing. Maintaining a complex ecosystem like the ISS is an ongoing enterprise and NASA needs logistics and safety expertise to ensure the space station continues to achieve its groundbreaking scientific research on the ‘final frontier.’

Booz Allen’s Modeling, Analysis, Visualization and Robotic Integration Center (MAVRIC) in Houston continues to assist planning activities for new systems and science cargo, while ensuring that these new items are designed and installed optimally to ensure crew safety inside the space station. In parallel, outside the station, our team assesses external science payload placements to optimize scientific research benefits, as well as monitor the constant visiting vehicle traffic to protect from collision with ISS structure.  

The ISS has a finite area, but is always being updated with new systems and tools. Determining the placement of these items is critical for the optimal running of the space station and the safety of the crew.

Booz Allen maintains a set of volume requirements that govern the areas where equipment cannot be placed, so called “keep out zones”, to avoid blocking ventilation, lighting, and critical controls. These requirements also include pathways that need to stay clear for the crew to move around—in both normal and emergency situations. Unfortunately, on orbit, these keep out zones are not visible to the crew. Plus, as the ISS becomes more crowded, it’s increasingly difficult to find available locations to place needed equipment and scientific tools required for ISS missions. 

When it comes to ISS, you can’t just “Google it”. To solve ISS’ logistics problem, Booz Allen’s MAVRIC team uses 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD) modeling to assess ISS internal and external configurations. Models of the space and motion needs, or “3D envelopes,” are created for each equipment requirement. This allows for quick study of clearances and interferences between hardware and keep out zones. Externally, we also use a set of robotic simulations that allow the team to simulate the ISS robotic arm movement and study extraction of payloads from visiting vehicles as well as moving these payloads to their planned-for location. For hardware that requires specific fields of view, we apply line-of-sight techniques using in-house tools to determine its optimal placement.