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February 2025 workshop: Mars crew complement white-paper briefing (industry and academia deck)

Document: 2025-ia-workshop-wp-mars-crew-complement.pdf, 7 slides, 1,087,344 bytes, from https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/, fetched 2026-10-01T18:28:05Z (sources/manifest.csv). Title slide: "Mars Crew Complement Considerations", "February 2025", David Baumann, Director, Human Research Program, Space Operations Mission Directorate. Text: sources/text/docs/2025-02-2025-ia-workshop-wp-mars-crew-complement.txt; images in sources/raw/slides/2025-02-2025-ia-workshop-wp-mars-crew-complement/. Read from the images: the text-poor slides 3, 4 and 5 (the title slide, 1, was not viewed; its text gives title and presenter). No "Moon Base", "CUI" or "Pre-Decisional" in the text (searched).

What it is. A briefing of the 2024 white paper Mars Crew Complement Considerations at the industry and academia workshop of February 2025. The partners' workshop had the same slides under another presenter (international copy). It gives no crew number, like the paper. The decision came later in 2025: MD-05, "no fewer than four" to the surface, in Rev C (Key definition tasks). Slide 6 reprints the paper's first page and takeaways. This page records only what the slides add.

Slides

Slide Title, as printed What it holds
1 Mars Crew Complement Considerations Title and presenter
2 Crew Complement Impacts What crew complement drives; "it is critical that NASA establishes crew complement early in the stages of architecture development"
3 Crew Health and Performance Considerations An "Integrated Human Performance" figure
4 Crew Responsibility and Workload Considerations The paper's Figure 1 (crew time)
5 Mission Concepts of Operation The paper's Figure 2 (three concepts)
6 Crew Complement Considerations White Paper The paper's first page and key takeaways
7 Questions and Discussion Four discussion prompts

What the slides add to the paper

  • Five hazard groups (slide 3, read from the image), beside "Crew complement must be appropriately sized to protect the physical and psychological health of the crew", under the heading "Integrated Human Performance":

    • "Space Radiation": "Acute In-flight Effects (controlled by vehicle design and operational constraints)", "Long-term Cancer Risk"
    • "Isolation & Confinement": "Behavioral Aspects of Isolation", "Individual Well Being", "Circadian Misalignment and Sleep Difficulties", "Team Cohesion and Performance"
    • "Distance from Earth": "Drives the Need for Effective, On-board Systems that Facilitate Crew Readiness to Respond to Demands and Anomalies – They Cannot Come Home for Treatment"
    • "Altered Gravity Fields": "Spaceflight Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome", "Balance Disorders", "Fluid Shifts", "Cardiovascular Deconditioning", "Muscle Atrophy", "Bone Loss"
    • "Hostile/Closed Environments": "Vehicle Design", "Environmental - CO2 Levels, Toxic Explosures, Water, Nutrition/Food", "Decreased Immune Functions, Microbiome Changes"

    The paper names some of these risks in prose ("crew behavioral health, team dynamics, probability of crew medical conditions"), not this grouping (search of its text for "Isolation" and "Altered Gravity").

  • The crew-time chart (slide 4) is the paper's Figure 1, with the same ten labels and footnote, beside "There are practical limitations on how many in-mission responsibilities a single crew member can support — crew complement must account for all mission tasks". Values are notional and unprinted, as in the paper.

  • The three concepts (slide 5) are the paper's Figure 2, here headed "All Crew to Vicinity Only", "Split Crew" and "All Crew to Surface" (the paper: "Crew to Vicinity Only"), captioned "Three concepts of operation for a Humans to Mars segment mission".
  • Discussion prompts (slide 7): "How do the key crew complement considerations (e.g., crew time, autonomous systems) relate to your organization's work?"; "What human performance and workload limits are expected to drive crew complement needs? Are there communities of practice we should engage?"; "What near-term technology development opportunities could support achieving Earth-independent mission operations due to communication delays?"; "How can lunar missions demonstrate crew complement alignment with mission objectives?"

Oddities

  • "Toxic Explosures" (slide 3), as printed.

Mars Crew Complement Considerations · Key definition tasks: MD-05 · Humans to Mars · Human Systems · International copy