Resilience-Driven Habitability Evaluation Framework for Space Habitation Systems

As humanity continuously prepares for long-duration missions beyond Earth orbit, the development of resilient space habitats becomes increasingly critical. Traditional system design evaluation methods based solely on reliability and robustness are insufficient to address the extreme, uncertain, and unpredictable conditions of space. This paper proposes a resilience-driven habitability evaluation framework for future space habitats, focusing particularly on sustaining critical life-support functions under both expected and unexpected disruptions. The framework integrates a physics-based numerical space habitat simulator with a habitability-specific resilience assessment methodology. This framework is structured through a multi-step, end-to-end resilience analysis development process. To support quantitative resilience evaluation, an objective-specific resilience metric is developed. Its effectiveness is systematically assessed by comparing its results to those of well-known generic metrics and qualitative analysis outcomes. Furthermore, a space habitat simulator is developed based on identified simulation model requirements to enhance the fidelity of habitability evaluations. Several illustrative case studies are presented to demonstrate the practicality of the proposed framework and to identify optimal space habitat configurations and operational strategies under a representative damage scenario.