Image: Stellar Amenities
Why accessibility belongs in habitat design
A lunar base will be home to people for weeks and then months. Everyone who lives there will, at some point, have reduced mobility, hearing or vision, from injury, fatigue, the suit they are wearing or the effects of reduced gravity on the body. A habitat designed only for a narrow ideal crew member is a habitat that fails when conditions change.
Designing for crew members with disabilities makes a base safer and easier to use for everyone. The same cues that guide a blind crew member also guide a sighted one through a smoke-filled module.
The ESA feasibility study
In September 2022, ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team began a project on the feasibility of an accessible lunar base, led by Antonia Sattler of Delft University of Technology with Pablo Gómez of ESA. Stellar Amenities consulted on the work. The project worked with Birne 7 e.V., a nonprofit of people with physical impairments, to bring the astronaut’s perspective together with lived experience of disability.
The study, published in February 2023, analysed existing lunar habitat concepts and focused on the ESA-SOM-MIT habitat design. With expert interviews, it walked through how a person with a physical impairment would use the habitat and its devices, and mapped the areas of the design that were not accessible.
It starts from a gap in current policy. ESA’s parastronaut programme is open to astronauts with lower limb deficiency, a leg length difference or short stature, and the project looked at what a base would need to include a broader range of physical impairments.
Its conclusion is that inclusive design is a safety measure as well as an access measure. Accessible systems add redundancy and protect astronauts with and without physical impairments, including anyone with a temporary injury. The aim is a framework that habitability design and space architecture can build on.
The panel with ESA, UNOOSA and AstroAccess
On May 11, 2023, the European Space Agency’s Diversity and Inclusiveness Service hosted a webinar on accessibility in human spaceflight. Stellar Amenities shared a panel with AstroAccess, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs and the Space Architecture Lab, discussing how habitats, vehicles and operations can include people with disabilities.
This research note brings together the questions from that discussion and our work on lunar habitat interiors.
What an accessible moon base needs
Navigation by more than sight. Tactile rails, textured floors and audio cues give every crew member several ways to find their way, building on the tactile navigation AstroAccess tested in microgravity.
Reach and mobility in partial gravity. Handholds, anchors and work surfaces placed for a range of bodies and ways of moving, including wheelchair users and people with limb differences.
Communication without sound. Visual alerts and signed communication for deaf and hard of hearing crew, and for anyone working in a suit or a noisy module.
Operations that plan for change. Procedures and layouts that still work when a crew member is injured or fatigued, so accessibility is part of safety rather than an exception.
Source: Antonia Sattler, Christian Schulz, Jonas Jung, Sebastian Schroth and Pablo Gómez, “Accessibility on a Lunar Base: Feasibility Study,” February 2023, and ESA Advanced Concepts Team, “Accessibility on a Lunar Base.”