A base on the Moon surface or a mission to Mars are potential destinations for human spaceflight, according to current space agencies’ plans. These scenarios pose several new challenges, since the environmental and operational conditions of the mission will strongly differ than those on the International Space Station (ISS). One critical parameter will be the increased mission duration and further distance from Earth, requiring a Life Support System (LSS) as independent as possible from Earth’s resources. Current LSS physico-chemical technologies at the ISS can recycle 90% of water and regain 42% of O2 from the astronaut’s exhaled CO2, but they are not able to produce food, which can currently only be achieved using biology. A future LSS will most likely include some of these technologies currently in use, but will also need to include biological components. A potential biological candidate are microalgae, which compared to higher plants, offer a higher harvest index, higher biomass productivity and require less water. Several algal species have already been investigated for space applications in the last decades, being Chlorella vulgaris a promising and widely researched species. C. vulgaris is a spherical single cell organism, with a mean diameter of 6 µm. It can grow in a wide range of pH and temperature levels and CO2 concentrations and it shows a high resistance to cross contamination and to mechanical shear stress, making it an ideal organism for long-term LSS. In order to continuously and efficiently produce the oxygen and food required for the LSS, the microalgae need to grow in a well-controlled and stable environment. Therefore, besides the biological aspects, the design of the cultivation system, the Photobioreactor (PBR), is also crucial. Even if research both on C. vulgaris and in general about PBRs has been carried out for decades, several challenges both in the biological and technological aspects need to be solved, before a PBR can be used as part of the LSS in a Moon base. Those include: radiation effects on algae, operation under partial gravity, selection of the required hardware for cultivation and food processing, system automation and long-term performance and stability.
The aim of this paper is to optimize reliability and mass of three CO2 extraction technologies/components: the 4-Bed Molecular Sieve, the Electrochemical Depolarized Concentrator and the Solid Amine Water Desorption. The first one is currently used in the International Space Station and the last two are being developed, and could be used for future long duration missions. This work is part of a complex study of the Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) reliability. The result of this paper is a methodology to analyze the reliability and mass at a component level, which is used in this paper for the CO2 extraction technologies, but that can be applied to the ECLSS technologies that perform other tasks, such as oxygen generation or water recycling, which will be a required input for the analysis of an entire ECLSS. The key parameter to evaluate any system to be used in space is mass, as it is directly related to the launch cost. Moreover, for long duration missions, reliability will play an even more important role, as no resupply or rescue mission is taken into consideration. Each technology is studied as a reparable system, where the number of spare parts to be taken for a specific mission will need to be selected, to maximize the reliability and minimize the mass of the system. The problem faced is a Multi-Objective Optimization Problem (MOOP), which does not have a single solution. Thus, optimum solutions of MOOP, the ones that cannot be improved in one of the two objectives, without degrading the other one, are found for each selected technology. The solutions of the MOOP for the three technologies are analyzed and compared, considering other parameters such as the type of mission, the maturity of the technology and potential interactions/synergies with other technologies of the ECLSS.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.