Integrating Scenario-Based Life Cycle Assessment into Model-Based Systems Engineering for Space Exploration Systems Design

Ambitions for sustained human presence beyond Earth are accelerating, while environmental accountability and long development timelines expose limits of document-centric systems engineering approach. Crewed mission architectures integrate propulsion, communications, life support, and habitats under tight safety, performance, and sustainability constraints; decisions propagate across technologies and phases, and their impacts unfold over space and time under uncertainty. Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) can manage architectural complexity, but it rarely embeds life cycle sustainability reasoning with sufficient fidelity or timeliness. This paper introduces the concept of a framework that unifies MBSE and Scenario-Based Life Cycle Assessment (SB-LCA) to perform continuous, traceable, time- and location-aware sustainability evaluation as systems’ designs evolve. The framework consists of two layers: (i) a process-based LCA that quantifies the environmental impact of technologies to drive architecture trades; (ii) a transportation layer that selects payload-feasible launcher classes and partitions their footprint into static (manufacture, propellants, end-of-life) and variable (trajectory-resolved operations) contributions. Within this second layer, mission analysis couples emissions and atmospheric-response models to generate a geo-referenced inventory. Hetero-functional graphs capture interdependencies and enable reuse of SB-LCA modules across phases. The proposed approach is envisioned to identify dominant drivers, quantify sensitivities to payload growth, vehicle choice, and trajectory design, and iteratively guide lower-impact configurations - providing measurable environmental targets for responsible human space exploration.