Space Logistics - Current Activities

Current Activities

According to Manufacturing Business Technology,

NASA has awarded $3.8 million to two MIT engineering professors to pursue an interdisciplinary study for adapting supply chain logistics to support interplanetary material transport and transfer. Professors David Simchi-Levi and Olivier de Weck of the MIT Engineering Systems Division will spearhead the project in partnership with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Payload Systems, and United Space Alliance.

Sustainable space exploration is impossible without appropriate supply chain management and unlike Apollo, future exploration will have to rely on a complex supply network on the ground and in space. The primary goal of this project is to develop a comprehensive supply chain management framework and planning tool for space logistics. The eventual integrated space logistics framework will encompass terrestrial movement of material and information, transfer to launch sites, integration of payload onto launch vehicles and launch to Low Earth Orbit, in-space and planetary transfer, and planetary surface logistics. The MIT-led interplanetary supply chain management model will take a four-phase development approach:

1. Review of supply chain management lessons learned from Earth-based commercial and military projects, including naval submarine and arctic logistics

2. Space logistics network analyses based on modeling Earth-Moon-Mars orbits and expected landing-exploration sites

3. Demand/supply modeling that embraces uncertainty in demand, cargo mix, costs, and supply chain disruptions

4. Development of an interplanetary supply chain architecture.