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In the future, there will be a continued presence of man in space. This may become realized with a simple platform, or possibly with a fully developed space station. In any case, the Life Sciences Division of NASA sees an opportunity for future studies involving long duration 0 gravity exposure. Because of the automation required for an unmanned, man-visited platform, it appears to be the greatest challenge. Thus, this paper will discuss the type of space platform/station presently being considered, the kind of life sciences facility(or laboratory) which would be required, and the scientific questions and experiments which might be carried out on a space platform/station. The need for a space platform/station for Life Sciences is also addressed as well as specific animal requirements.

The Advanced Programs Office in the Life Sciences Division at Ames has performed a survey and analysis of hardware and operational requirements necessary for supporting plant and animal research onboard the Space Station. This research may be conducted internal to a dedicated pressurized module, distributed among several modules, and on external platforms and free flyers. Hypothetical experiments have been defined and integrated into 90 day missions to allow analysis of crew activities and timelines, resource requirements (e.g. power, weight, and volume), equipment layouts, and alternative levels of equipment automation. Where these analyses have shown critical areas for automation, conceptual designs have been developed to evaluate feasibility. To stay within current Space Station resource allocations, approximately 85% of the planned life science experiment tasks must be automated.

The Centrifuge Accommodation Module (CAM) will be the home of the fundamental biology research facilities on the International Space Station (ISS). These facilities are being built by the Biological Research Project (BRP), whose goal is to oversee development of a wide variety of habitats and host systems to support life sciences research on the ISS. The habitats and host systems are designed to provide life support for a variety of specimens including cells, bacteria, yeast, plants, fish, rodents, eggs (e.g., quail), and insects. Each habitat contains specimen chambers that allow for easy manipulation of specimens and alteration of sample numbers. All habitats are capable of sustaining life support for 90 days and have automated as well as full telescience capabilities for sending habitat parameters data to investigator homesite laboratories.

Life sciences research facilities planned for the U.S. Space Station will accommodate life sciences investigations addressing the influence of microgravity on living organisms. Current projects within the Life Sciences Space Station Program (LSSSP), the Life Sciences Space Biology (LSSB) and Extended Duration Crew Operations (EDCO) projects, will explore the physiological, clinical, and sociological implications of long duration space flight on humans and the influence of microgravity on other biological organisms/systems. Initially, the primary research will emphasize certifying man for routine 180-day stays on the Space Station. Operational crew rotations of 180 days or more will help reduce Space Station operational costs and minimize the number of Space Transportation System (STS) shuttle flights required to support Space Station.

The relative importance of life sciences in spaceflight depends on the nature of the: mission. For brief missions to low earth orbit, such as Shuttle flights, issues involving health concerns, life support, or crew factors present fewer challenges than would longer flights, e.g., those planned for Space Station. For missions of exploration, such as a Mars expedition, the life sciences are not only important to the safety and success of the mission, they are on the critical path to being able to embark on the mission at all. This paper presents a brief history of the role of life sciences in the space program and describes the characteristics of exploration missions that impact life sciences requirements. It concludes by outlining what needs to be done if the very demanding life sciences requirements of exploration missions are to be supported.

The paper reviews technical trends in the development of life support systems for future manned space missions. Although open loop systems have been used to date, future designs for installations in permanent micro-gravity orbit, long duration transport and ultimately, lunar or planetary bases will rely on regenerative processes to reduce the penalties associated with on-board storage and the resupply of consumables from Earth. In the medium term, these processes will utilise physico-chemical methods, typically to recover metabolic oxygen from respiratory carbon dioxide and fresh water from contaminated water. Food and waste will continue to be treated as open loop consumables and expendables. Later, as sufficient terrain becomes available, lunar or planetary habitats will begin to use a combination of biologically derived and physico-chemical processes to process waste, recycle organic nutrients and produce food.

Thermo-chemical-mechanical (TCM) feedstock conversion (FC) systems originally developed for high temperature conversion of domestic solid feedstock or blends to useful liquid and gaseous fuels are examined for advanced life support (ALS) applications in spacecraft. Recently, exploratory investigations with these TCM-FC systems to use or sequester CO2 have led also to a focus on the production of useful chemicals and chars (activated carbon, humates, CO2 scrubbers, chelating and detoxifying agents, etc). TCM systems can process solid blends with catalysts, adsorbants, reactants, carbon dioxide, steam, air, oxygen, natural gas and liquids. This study considers applications of CCTL’s laboratory scale TCM-FCs for the conversion of the solid waste into sterile and useful gases, liquids or chars on long space missions. TCM units are extrusion systems, and are more adaptable to zero gravity than fluidized bed systems or other systems that rely on gravity.

Lunar base construction study has been conducted under the sponsorship of many Japanese industries to amend the man tended lunar outpost study carried by NASDA. Permanent lunar base construction is to be constrained by the ability of the usable transportation system carrying the basic modules composing lunar base itself. Based upon the experiences of Antarctic Research Expedition and of designing International Space Station now going on it was assumed the initial permanent lunar base has to be composed of two habitats and one power module for letting possible to alive 8 crews, and has to be expanded by adding three or four modules in every year for improving the easiness of livingness. In early stage of construction, crew members have to live and work using only two habitat modules with getting the electric power from power module, therefore the minimum self support functions except the food and oxygen supplying have to be attached to the habitat modules.

The Systems Integration, Modeling and Analysis (SIMA) element1 of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Advanced Life Support (ALS) Project conducts on-going studies to determine the most efficient means of achieving a human mission to Mars. Life support for the astronauts constitutes an extremely important part of the mission and will undoubtedly add significant mass, power, volume, cooling and crew time requirements to the mission. Equivalent system mass (ESM) is the sum of these five parameters on an equivalent mass basis and can be used to identify potential ways to reduce the overall cost of the mission. SIMA has documented several reference missions in enough detail to allow quantitative studies to identify optimum ALS architectures. The Mars Dual Lander Mission, under consideration by the Johnson Space Center (JSC) Exploration Office, is one of those missions.

A functional analysis was performed to identify life support functions and interrelationships required for manned space exploration. Methods were identified to provide each of these functions, ranging from resupply of consumables to totally regenerative processes. Specific mission characteristics and their effect on advanced life support requirements are outlined. A preliminary assessment is made as to which life support functions are critical for missions of various duration. Technologies which have been selected for Space Station Freedom and associated degrees of closure are discussed and areas for future work are suggested.

NASA's Constellation Program, which includes the mission objectives of establishing a permanently-manned lunar Outpost, and the exploration of Mars, poses new and unique challenges for human life support systems that will require solutions beyond the Shuttle and International Space Station state of the art systems. In particular, the requirement to support crews for extended durations at the lunar outpost with limited resource resupply capability will require closed-loop regenerative life support systems with minimal expendables. Planetary environmental conditions such as lunar dust and extreme temperatures, as well as the capability to support frequent and extended-duration Extra-vehicular Activity's (EVA's) will be particularly challenging.

For botanical experiments with durations of several months (EURECA BOTANY FACILITY and COLUMBUS GRAVITATIONAL BIOLOGY FACILITY) consumables like water, carbondioxide, oxygen and phytotoxin removal gas may contribute significantly to the weight of a Life Support Subsystem (LSS). Since the amount of such consumables has a significant influence on the optimum choice of the LSS, a literature survey has been performed to obtain realistic values which may be used for preliminary design purposes. Based on a comparison of the likely performance requirements the LSS of Orbital Botanical Facilities (OBF) and the Environmental Control and Life Support Subsystem (ECLSS) of the carrier, various LSS concepts are discussed which interact to a varying degree with the ECLSS. Interaction means in this case that the ECLSS is used as a resource for the consumables needed by the LSS. Advantages and disadvantages of such interaction, in particular weight savings and technical complexity are addressed.

Due to the late flight opportunity for the BOTANY FACILITY on the second EURECA mission a sized down facility, referred to as the MINI BOTANY FACILITY (MBF), to be flown in a re-entering capsule, for example the Russian BIOKOSMOS, is currently being studied. As a minimum, the following subsystems are baselined for the MBF: Experiment container/-cuvette, visualization, illumination, life support, thermal control, waste control and fluid supply. The paper addresses firstly the impact of the new boundary conditions (e.g. operation in pressure controlled environment, much shorter mission duration) on the selection of viable concepts for the Life Support Subsystem (LSS). Next a number of options for soil moisture control is discussed and analysed. Finally, the pre-development of components and a miniaturized sensor for soil moisture is addresssed.

Of the possible Life Support Systems evaluation criteria, the criterion of "integral reliability" is proposed. This criterion incorporates three main indices: reliability, mass, and quality of life. It is possible to interrelate these indices only if the space mission is considered as a whole. It is shown that there must exist a LSS mass optimum with respect to mission reliability. The specific form of "integral reliability" expression and the number of terms depend on the mission scenario. This work considers different LSS for orbital station, Lunar base, and Mars mission scenarios.

The NASA Office of Exploration (OXEP) was established in June 1987 to provide recommendations and viable alternatives for an early 1990's national decision on a focused program for human exploration of the solar system, particularly of the Moon and Mars. 1 Missions beyond the low earth orbit Space Station Freedom poise new and different challenges for crew life support systems (LSS). Case study missions under consideration will demand careful selection of reliable and efficient LSS technology by the mission planners. This paper describes a study currently underway to develop a Mission Planners LSS Guidebook for providing tabular data, such as weight, volume, and power for comparing various LSS approaches against key drivers derived from mission case studies. These quanitative data facilitate LSS approach selection for any mission of interest bounded by the current OXEP case studies.

Evaluation of Life Support System (LSS) mass has to take into account not only mass of components and stock of expendable substances but also the mass of power supply and heat rejection systems. The productivity of biological regeneration processes grows with power supply but at high level of power supply the efficiency of these processes is decreased. On the other hand increasing of power supply causes growing of energetic and hit rejection system mass. So, optimization problem on optimal intensity of regeneration processes appears. It is shown that the value of power supplied providing minimal total mass of LSS does not depend on the level of closure and mission duration.

Exploration Life Support (ELS) is a technology development project under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Exploration Technology Development Program. The ELS Project's goal is to develop and mature a suite of Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) technologies for potential use on human spacecraft under development in support of U.S. Space Exploration Policy. Technology development is directed at three major vehicle projects within NASA's Constellation Program: the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), the Altair Lunar Lander and Lunar Surface Systems, including habitats and pressurized rovers. The ELS Project includes four technical elements: Atmosphere Revitalization Systems, Water Recovery Systems, Waste Management Systems and Habitation Engineering, and two cross cutting elements, Systems Integration, Modeling and Analysis, and Validation and Testing.

In a long term vision of space exploration an orbiting station located at Earth Moon Lagrangian Point 1 (EML1), named ECLIPSE should act as a logistic node supporting traffic between Earth, Moon and the future manned and unmanned missions towards Mars. The paper presents the results of the study performed during the SEEDS III Project Work Phase: focusing on the preliminary concepts of the Habitability and the Environmental Control and Life Support System for the ECLIPSE Medical Center (EMC) and ECLIPSE Quarantine Module (EQM), the Cis Lunar Orbiting Shuttle (CLOS) and the Mobile Pressurized Control Module (MPCM).

This paper presents the requirements and baseline design for a subsurface Life Support System (LSS) to support an underground habitat. The purpose of this effort was to demonstrate/validate the feasibility of building an operational habitat to support survivable and enduring operations of a deeply based ICBM weapon system. Described is an overall life support design for a crew of 100 to 600 persons that encompasses all required life support subsystems, arrangement and construction of Habitat enclosures and protection from the effects of a subsurface environment. Effects of habitat layout, type of power source, environment, rock temperature and moisture content, crew size and mission length were investigated. Regenerative and non-regenerative systems were compared on the basis of life cycle cost. Results of this Life Support System study were much different than those previously conducted for space and submarine application due to the difficulty in rejecting heat.

NASA's Office of Exploration depends on both robotic and human exploration system capabilities to support a rich set of lunar and Mars mission options. Permanent operations on the lunar surface will demand high systems availability and low logistics. Mars human exploration missions require sustainable operations with no logistics except what has been forward deployed on earlier missions. This paper will discuss the top-level mission requirements and the systems engineering issues for life support systems which must be addressed to support viable human exploration missions for lunar and Mars applications.