Engineering
Jacobs’ engineering teams develop and sustain flight and ground hardware and software for human space flight. The engineering services provided are extensive, including design and fabrication; simulation; software development; thermal, stress, vibration, and loads analysis and testing; communications and data processing; and failure analysis. Applications range from crew health and habitation systems, avionics and instrumentation, cameras, robotic systems, extravehicular activity tool development, and propulsion and power systems.
Systems Architecture & Integration
Our team provides project management, systems and project engineering, testing support, and cost and schedule analysis to NASA. Our engineers sustain the exercise countermeasures systems hardware on the International Space Station; support a variety of robotics projects, including rovers; and operate elaborate test systems to mimic docking scenarios and crewed activities in various gravity scenarios.
Avionics and Energy
Our engineers provide critical engineering, design and testing of avionics and energy hardware and software monitoring systems essential to the International Space Station, Orion and Gateway Programs. Communication architectures based on wireless and wired systems, including antenna design and testing, are supported for in-space reliability. Our systems design engineers continually develop cutting-edge technology supporting new human factors user interfaces between the astronauts and ground controllers. This crucial design and testing effort ensures the success of energy conversion and vehicle status monitoring systems to power future missions to the Moon and Mars.
Life Support & Systems
Projects and services span the entire engineering life cycle and various NASA programs. Flight projects focus on providing the life support, environmental control, and emergency hardware to keep the crew safe with a specialization in air and water purification. Our team also supports NASA-led advanced exploration research into oxygen/hydrogen generation and the application of various biocides for water and urine processing. We are at the forefront in providing engineering services to NASA in oversight and monitoring of commercial crew vehicle life support systems development as well as subsystem level requirements and verification definition for the Orion and Gateway architectures.
Crew Systems
Our engineers support the thermal control systems for science, International Space Station, and crew. We ensure all science with a temperature requirement is safely delivered to the station, maintained while aboard and returned to the ground. We also develop tools used by the astronauts to perform maintenance activities on equipment outside the station, supply habitation systems the crew needs to live in the vehicle, such as waste and hygiene, and develop and maintain the launch and entry suits and survival gear the crew members wear when traveling to and from the station. Our support of commercial vehicles enables the success of commercial crews through technical insight, recommendations, and shared practices for safety.
Power & Propulsion
Our team is involved in various stages of design, testing, and integration of hardware, such as batteries, propulsion systems, parachutes, and lunar rovers.
EVA Systems, Ground Support Equipment, Testing
Our team is engaged with all aspects relating to Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Systems. An EVA is commonly known as a "spacewalk", and we bring together a wide range of skills to ensure America's astronauts can perform their spacewalks safely and efficiently. One key focus of our work is spacesuits, which are essentially spaceships built for one person. We perform design, analysis, manufacturing, and testing of existing spacesuits as well as next-generation suits for use on the Moon or Mars. In addition to supporting spacesuit efforts, we develop related tools that the astronauts need while performing tasks in space, and we develop and operate ground support equipment used to test EVA hardware before launch.