SELENE Space Habitat Design
Part of a group term project, Stellar Excursions: Leaving Earth for Novel Experiences (SELENE) is a commercial space habitat designed to conduct a series of Lunar flybys for a new generation of space tourists. The course utilized a systems engineering approach to develop a minimal design to support the mission functions, including selecting a launch vehicle, upper propulsive stage, and crew transfer vehicle. The focus of the course was sizing the habitat and subsystems from a top-down heuristic standpoint and a bottom-up functional decomposition approach, ultimately working toward developing a point-of-departure conceptual design.
This project was carried out in ASEN 5158 Space Habitat Design at the University of Colorado Boulder in Fall 2020 with Dr. David Klaus. Team members were: Peter Gumble, Ben Pearson, Corey LePine, Victoria Kravets, Erin Shimoda, Michael Strong, Ben Easter, and myself. I was the systems engineering lead and responsible for the structural subsystem.
Project Goal: Safely support 4 tourists for 5 days in LEO followed by a lunar flyby with return to a LEO parking orbit for up to 24 hours before departing back to Earth.
Class Objective: Analyze the stated Mission Goal as a framework to:
Develop a conceptual vehicle design with first order mass/volume estimates
Define subsystems and key operations required
Select a launch vehicle for transport of the ‘wet’ habitat (but without crew) from Earth to LEO, incorporating a propulsion system for orbital maneuvers
Build up of the habitat structural subsystem, including mechanisms and support for thermal and power. The cupola was added as a tourist amenity for Earth observation and providing the best experience during the Lunar flyby.
Concept of Operations (ConOps) for the tourist mission.
Various solar and radiator array configurations studied during design
Following only a loose layout, this volumetric diagram shows the volume of the interior equipment and consumable mass within the pressurized volume and the remaining habitable volume for the 4 tourists and 2 crew members.
The spacecraft interior was sized to accommodate a range of body sizes, with a two-level layout separating the private crew quarters and the communal space.
View of the Moon through the cupola
Tourist Crew Dragon preparing to dock with SELENE
SELENE and APU depart for the Moon