This course is available with a live instructor
onsite or through a virtual platform.
COMING SOON: This course is also available on-demand, working at your own pace.
Human missions raise the stakes. A single design decision can affect crew safety, mission success, operational complexity, and long-term sustainability. Human Spaceflight Mission Analysis and Design equips you to reason deliberately about those trade-offs—where ambition meets risk, and architecture must protect lives.
Unlike robotic systems, human missions demand that performance, safety, physiology, operations, and cost be considered simultaneously. This course provides a structured, systems-based approach to conceptual human mission design—from objectives and architecture definition through operational planning. You’ll examine how early choices about orbit, rendezvous, entry and landing, vehicle configuration, and support subsystems shape safety margins, mission assurance, and feasibility.
Safety and mission assurance are treated as primary design drivers throughout the course. You’ll examine how human factors—physiology, psychology, crew performance— impact mission architecture and operations. Apply design and sizing methods for life support, propulsion, power, thermal control, guidance and navigation, EVA systems, and logistics. Examine real case studies—from ISS and Commercial Crew to lunar and Mars concepts—to ground the discussion in practical experience.
Are you shaping human mission architectures? Evaluating crew safety and mission assurance trade-offs? Designing systems or components for a crewed mission?This course is designed for program managers, engineers, architects, and scientists responsible for designing or assessing crewed space missions.
At the end of this course you will be better able to tie mission elements together to describe tradeoffs between human spaceflight system design and mission operations. You will examine human space mission design using a systems engineering approach to translating space mission objectives, requirements, and constraints into viable and cost-effective systems and operations concepts.
At the end of this course, you will be able to:
✦ Interpret and convert space mission objectives, requirements, and constraints into visible and cost-effective operations concepts
✦ Understand the space environment and its impact on humans and hardware
✦ Explain the physiology of space flight, human factors, and psychological aspects
✦ Describe a process-oriented approach for creating cost-effective space missions
✦ Describe the key functions that must be performed for mission operations
✦ Apply effective methodology for translating space mission objectives, requirements, and designs into viable and cost-effective operations concepts
✦ Explain the interrelationships and tradeoffs between system design and mission operation
✦ Module 1: Mission Design
• Designing Human Space Missions
• Safety of Human Space Missions
• Space Environments
✦ Module 2: Crew
• Physiology of Human Spaceflight
• Human Factors and Psychology
• International Crewed Missions
✦ Module 3: Orbits and Trajectories
• Understanding Orbits and Maneuvers
• Describing and Using Orbits
• Orbit Maneuvering and Rendezvous
• Entry, Descent, Landing and Ascent
✦ Module 4: The Space Element
• Designing and Sizing Space Elements
• Designing and Sizing Transfer Vehicles
• Cost Estimating
✦ Module 5: Support Subsystems
• Thermal Control
• Environmental Control and Life Support
• Crew Accommodation
• ADCS/GNC
• Electrical Power
• Data Handling
• Structures
• Space Propulsion
• EVA systems
✦ Module 6: Mission Operations Element
• Mission Operations
• Command, Control and Communications (C3)
• Logistics Support
• In-Situ Resources
✦ Case Studies
• Project: Mars
• ISS
• Commercial Crew
• Lunar Outpost
✦ Threaded Case Study and Hands-on Exercises
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