Human engineering support is critical to human spaceflight and to the International Space Station (ISS) Program Office. The ISS Flight Crew Integration (FCI) team is one of the HH&P ISS Systems and is comprised of the Human Factors Implementation Team (HFIT) and Operational Habitability (OpsHab).
The FCI HFIT Team helps maintain the current ISS Human Factors requirements and standards. HFIT provides ISS payload developers guidance in designing flight hardware crew interfaces that meet these Human Factors requirements and guidelines. Requirements are meant to prevent crew injury and avoid hardware damage. Guidelines are meant to facilitate mission success. HFIT provides support during SRR, PDR, and CDR, and provides formal verification via a Certificate of Compliance (COC).
HFIT creates and maintains a set of standard label drawings that are available to order for any flight hardware. For payloads utilizing the HFIT team, a Label Concierge service is provided to determine needed labels and place label orders via the eLabel tool. OpNom Concierge service is also provided to coordinate approval of payload OpNom name and all hardware OpNom.
The FCI OpsHab Team is a small, agile group of Human Engineering experts and stenographers that collect and analyze astronaut feedback regarding living and working in space onboard the International Space Station (ISS) and in support of other programs, including Commercial Crew. Astronaut feedback is collected for short and long-duration missions while the astronauts are onboard the ISS and upon their return to Earth.
The OpsHab team updates and maintains this astronaut feedback in the FCI Crew Comments Database (CCDB). This unrivaled and ever-expanding collection of long-duration spaceflight data currently contains over 100,000+ individual crew comments spanning ISS missions from July 2000 to the present. CCDB debrief feedback covers a wide range of topics including, but not limited to:
- Human Factors & Habitability
- Dining
- Hygiene
- Onboard maintenance and hardware performance
- Extravehicular Activity (EVA)
- Future considerations for long duration space missions
CCDB data is used to generate specific reports and lessons learned over time to inform designers, architects, engineers, researchers, and others who design and develop spaceflight vehicles and habitats. Based on the team’s long-duration spaceflight operations expertise, they are also called on to support human factors and usability assessments, as well as support close call and mishap investigations.
Points of Contact
Jenae Aber
Richard Ellenberger
Susan Schuh
