Exploration Life Support Technology Development for Lunar Missions

Exploration Life Support (ELS) is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) technology development projects managed by NASA’s Exploration Technology Development Program (ETDP), under the guidance of the Advanced Capabilities Division of the NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD). ELS plans, coordinates and implements the development of new life support technologies for human space exploration. ELS content includes four functional elements: Atmosphere Revitalization Systems (ARS), Water Recovery Systems (WRS), Waste Management Systems (WMS) and Habitation Engineering, and two cross cutting elements, Systems Integration, Modeling and Analysis (SIMA), and Validation and Testing. The ELS project utilizes in-house efforts at five NASA Field Centers. EL S is managed from the Johnson Space Center and includes Marshall Spaceflight Center, Kennedy Space Center, Ames Research Center and Glenn Research Center. The ELS project also incorporates aerospace industry contracts, university grants, Small Business In novative Research (SBIR) contracts and other means to develop advanced life support technologies. Testing, analysis and reduced gravity flight experiments are also conducted at the NASA field centers. The International Space Station could be used as a te st bed for certain technology development efforts. This paper gives a current status of technologies under development by ELS that will allow space exploration beyond low Earth orbit.