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28 MEMS and Microstructures in Aerospace Applications

2.3.4 EXPLORATION APPLICATIONS
There are a vast number of potential application areas for MEMS technology within
the context of the U.S. Vision for Space Exploration (VSE). We explore some of
those here.
In the integrated vehicle health management (IVHM) arena, emphasis will be
placed upon developing fault detection, diagnosis, prognostics, information fusion,
degradation management capabilities for a variety of space exploration vehicles and
platforms. Embedded MEMS technology could certainly play a significant role in
implementing automated spacecraft IVHM systems and the associated crew emer-
gency response advisory systems.
Developing future ISRU systems will dictate the need for automated systems to
collect lunar regolith for use in the production of consumables. Innovative ISRU
systems that minimize mass, power, and volume will be part of future power system
and vehicle refueling stations on the lunar surface and planetary surfaces. These
stations will require new techniques to produce oxygen and hydrogen from lunar
regolith, and further, new systems to produce propellants and other consumables
from the Mars atmosphere will need to be developed.
MEMS technology should also play a role in the development of the space and
surface environmental monitoring systems that will support exploration. Clearly the
observation, knowledge, and prediction of the space, lunar, and planetary environ-
ments will be important for exploration. MEMS could also be exploited in the
development of environmental monitoring systems for lunar and planetary habitats.
This too would be a very suitable area for MEMS technology infusion.

2.3.5 SPACE PARTICLES OR MORPHING ENTITIES
Significant technological changes will blossom in the next few years as the multiple
developments of MEMS, NEMS, micromachining, and biochemical technologies
create a powerful confluence. If the space community at large is properly prepared
and equipped, the opportunity to design, develop, and fly revolutionary, ultra-
integrated mechanical, thermal, chemical, fluidic, and biologic microsystems can
be captured. Building these type of systems is not feasible using conventional space
platform engineering approaches and methods.
Some space visionaries are so enthused by this huge ‘‘blue sky’’ potential as to
blaze completely new design paths over the next 15–25 years. They envision the
creation of such fundamentally new mission ideas as MEMS-based ‘‘spaceborne
sensor particles’’ or autonomously morphing space entities that would resemble
today’s state-of-the-art space platforms as closely as the currently ubiquitous PCs
resemble the slide rules used by an earlier generation of scientists and engineers.
These MEMS-enabled ‘‘spaceborne sensor particles’’ could be used to make very
dense in situ science observations and measurements. One can even envision these
‘‘spaceborne sensor particles’’ breaking the access-to-space bottleneck — which
significantly limits the scope of what we can do in space — by being able to take
advantage of novel space launch systems innovations such as electromagnetic or

© 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC