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The Space Exploration Initiative will contain many avenues for both space and terrestrial technology development and applications. In addition, the development of architecture independent technology will provide the first meaningful milestones as the overall program matures. A factor in SEI technology will be the utilization of various earth based analogs as functional testbeds for hardware, software and operations development and verification. The most interesting of these proposed analogs involves the Antarctic programs managed by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The driver for Antarctic Planetary Analog is an increased awareness of potential impacts from the continued science and exploration operations to this unique environment.

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) First Servicing Mission (FSM) marked a new era for Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA). This mission demonstrated it was possible to plan successive EVA days utilizing alternate astronaut teams to accomplish multiple tasks. The key element to the success of this mission was a systems engineering approach managed interfaces, developed design requirements, defined operational constraints/parameters, and established an astronaut training program. The approach can be applied to future spacecraft system design to increase the operational effectiveness with space assembly, maintenance and servicing.