Proposal of a Systematic Approach to Risk Assessment and Management in Space Station

Abstract

International Space Station (ISS) is the state-of-the-art largest man-made habitable living space in low Earth orbit. Safety is of primary concern in human missions to space; the problems in space are mostly of different nature than that encountered here on Earth and therefore, different ways and tools have to be developed to solve such issues: for this purpose it is necessary to consider both technical and environmental challenges. This report tries to investigate criticalities, challenges in addressing them and how they have been solved, from the point of view point of Safety; furthermore, an attempt was made to investigate the complexities of the problems of this habitable orbiting structure and smart ideas adopted to solve these problems in terms of safety and maintenance. The objective of the present report aims to understand how safety can be quantified with a help of FMECA methology, thus, giving an idea to what type of failures are most vulnerable ones and how one can work to eliminate or, otherwise, minimize it. Due to the fact that, the ISS consists of hundreds of thousands of components, only one of the subsystem (propulsion system) has been taken into consideration during the analysis. However, most of the major, systems, sub-systems, and their components have been enlisted to better understand the important aspects of the space station. The description and interpretation of the results obtained with the FMECA analysis offer further ideas, which can be useful to improve the safety of human missions in space.