Digital Engineering and Human Factors: Designing HALO
By Kelly McSweeney
Engineers are using digital engineering methods to design and test the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO). HALO is the first pressurized module for NASA’s Gateway, an outpost that will orbit the moon and provide a temporary home and workplace for astronauts.
"It's really fun and exciting to be on the cusp of the next step for NASA and for the nation," says Paul Escalera, Lead Systems Engineer on the HALO program.
As a systems engineer, Escalera's job is to ensure the various HALO engineering disciplines within the program come together to ensure the module meets all of NASA's requirements.
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Digital Engineering and Human Factors
To mimic the lunar environment, Northrop Grumman engineers on the predecessor program to HALO — NextStep-2 — adopted digital engineering tools to help inform the design. For example, they used 3D printing to build mock-ups and virtual reality to test-drive the design. In this case, they need to both ensure the design works on its own and account for human factors in engineering, since this will be a crewed module.
