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NASA NTRS2019

BioBot: Innovative Offloading of Astronauts for More Effective Exploration

The BioBot concept consists of a robotic rover which is capable of traversing the same terrain as a spacesuited human. It carries the primary life support system for the astronaut, including consumables, atmosphere revitalization systems (e.g., CO2 scrubbing, humidity and temperature management, ventilation fan), power system (e.g., battery, power management and distribution),and thermal control system (e.g., water sublimator, cooling water pump), along with umbilical lines to connect to the supported astronaut. Although not technically part of life support, it would be logical for the BioBot to also provide long-range communications, video monitoring, tool and sample transport, and other functions to enable and enhance EVA productivity in planetary surface exploration.The design reference scenario for this concept is that astronauts involved in future lunar or Mars exploration will be on the surface for weeks or months rather than days, and will be involved in regular EVA operations. It is not unreasonable to think of geologists spending several days inEVA exploration each week over a prolonged mission duration, with far more ambitious operational objectives than were typical of Apollo. In this scenario, each astronaut will be accompanied by a "BioBot", which will transport their life support system and consumables, an extended umbilical and umbilical reel, and robotic systems capable of controlling the position and motion of the umbilical. The astronaut will be connected to the robot via the umbilical, carrying only a small emergency open-loop life support system similar to those contained in every PLSS. The robotic mobility base will be designed to be capable of traveling anywhere the astronaut can walk, and will also be useful as a transport for the EVA tools, science instrumentation, and collected samples. In addition, the BioBot can potentially carry the astronaut on traverses as well. Such a system will also be a significant enhancement to public engagement in these future exploration missions, as the robotic vehicles can also support high-resolution cameras and high bandwidth communications gear to providehigh-definition video coverage of each crew throughout each EVA sortie.

Akin, David L.↗

NASA NTRS2019

In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) Living off the Land on the Moon and Mars

In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) is the concept of using local resources at various destinations to provide products and services for robotic and human explorers. This idea of 'living off the land' has the potential of reducing reliance on earth to supply mission consumables such as propellants and life support consumables. Local resources include: water, oxygen, and metals within the surface soil material (regolith), atmospheric gases (eg CO2 on Mars), and the regolith material itself. ISRU systems involve physically and chemically extracting these resources and converting them into desired products.

In-situ resource utilization↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

TPSAS-NF1676L-31522-DND

Currently, there are limitations in launch capability regarding requisite payload volume and mass for long duration extra-terrestrial missions. In-space additive manufacturing may provide a solution to this challenge and is applicable for articles ranging from large system and subsystem architectures to small consumables and replacement articles. For small articles, additive manufacturing is becoming more feasible through advances in instrumentation and novel manufacturing strategies capable of generating complex shapes. Many approaches, however, utilize feedstock materials that, once consumed, must be replenished before additional architectures can be generated. Thus, although promising, a major challenge with additive manufacturing is the required starting materials to support on-demand article generation. This presentation describes research toward reversibly assembling materials that can revert to the starting material state for subsequent fabrication. Polyimides were synthesized with thermally reversible Diels-Alder reaction functionalities, furan or maleimide moieties. These materials were characterized utilizing typical spectroscopic, thermal, and mechanical techniques. Amine hardener-enriched epoxy microparticles were synthesized for use as a mechanically robust substrate. Integration of these technologies into a single system and application toward generation of secondary structures on a launch vehicle as a means of in-situ resource utilization will be described.

Christopher J. Wohl↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

BioNutrients-1: Development of an On-Demand Nutrient Production System for Long-Duration Missions

Future long-duration missions beyond low-Earth orbit will require advances in food technologies to address the documented problem of degradation of vitamins and nutrients in supplied foods stored long-term. To begin to address the issue of nutrient degradation, we are developing and flight-testing a platform biomanufacturing technology for in situ production of target nutrients. This technology is being tested over a five-year duration on the International Space Station (ISS). As part of the BioNutrients-1 project we have developed an on-demand system for the production of two carotenoids, β-carotene and zeaxanthin, by genetically engineering distinct strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, more commonly known as baker’s yeast. The on-orbit nutrient production packs contain a desiccated yeast strain and edible growth substrate. Once hydrated, the contents of the production packs are intended to grow and produce a desired amount of ready-to-consume nutrients. In this current version the production packs will not be consumed and future missions will require an inactivation of microorganisms before consumption. In addition to the on-orbit hydration of the production packs a series of valuable microorganisms are currently being stored in stasis packs on the ISS including probiotics organisms, bacterial strains used in yogurt production, and organisms with potential use for future biomanufacturing. Analysis of returned ISS stasis packs and ground controls will include multi-omics studies and provide insight into long-term survival of organisms stored in a space environment. Both stasis packs and hydrated production packs will be intermittently returned to Earth for analysis. Preliminary data from long-term storage studies of stasis packs stored on the ISS for 47 days versus their ground control counterparts have shown no significant difference in viability. Currently no production packs have been processed.

Yeast↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

In-Situ Resource Utilization Options for the Moon and Mars

In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) is key to enabling extended presence at exploration locations. NASA’s focus for ISRU to date has been human exploration locations: the Moon and Mars. Likewise the primary target for ISRU has been the production of mission consumables for propulsion and life support. Producing oxygen alone from minerals on the Moon or atmosphere on Mars can provide the majority of these consumables. However, accessing water at either location allows for full propellant production (fuel and oxidizer) as well as other applications (eg life support). Current and previous study efforts have looked at mission architectures and ISRU mass payback for these options. Studies have also identified gaps in information needed to design effective ISRU hardware and choose best architectures

In-Situ Resource Utilization↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Improving the Recovery of Oxygen from Carbon Dioxide

Long duration human exploration missions far from Earth will need to recycle life support consumables for missions to be affordable. The state-of-the-art for atmosphere revitalization is not closed. Although the Sabatier Carbon Dioxide Reduction Assembly (CRA) on the International Space Station has the capability for full closure, there is insufficient metabolic hydrogen available from the Oxygen Generation System to recover more than about 47% of oxygen from carbon dioxide. Methane is produced as a byproduct, which consumes hydrogen that would otherwise be available to reduce additional carbon dioxide. Several strategies are available to increase the fraction of oxygen recovered. One is to pyrolyze methane to recover the lost hydrogen. Others are to replace the Sabatier with a new processor that is more efficient. Candidates include Bosch, Carbon Dioxide Electrolysis and Co-Electrolysis, and electrochemical reactors. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has recently made investments in several of these technologies which will be described in this presentation.

Carbon dioxide reduction↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Analysis of Historical International Space Station Logistical Mass Delivery

Crewed space exploration missions are extremely logistics dependent, as cargo requirements shape numerous program elements such as vehicle and habitat size. Logistics mass is the mass of items like food and clothing that are not a part of the vehicle or habitat, yet are required by the crew to complete the mission. Numerous studies, such as the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) and the Human Exploration Spacecraft Testbed for Integration and Advancement (HESTIA) 20-foot chamber analog, have been conceived to research the rates at which crews consume logistics mass. These analogs can simulate many aspects of life in space, including confinement, isolation, limited supplies, and, in certain experiments, the habitat pressure. However, some aspects of space exploration, such as the effects of low gravity and the use of space-based amenities, cannot currently be tested on the ground. In this paper, International Space Station (ISS) manifest data obtained through the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) Mission Integration Database Application System (MIDAS) portal is used as a precursor to space-based analogs. The objective of the analysis is determining the breakdown of logistics mass used in space exploration. This identifies potential areas of improvement and highlights the rates at which significant items are supplied, aiding in the weighing of alternative options such as utilizing in space manufacturing for supplies vs. manifesting spares, or cleaning clothing in flight vs. discarding it. Official flight manifests ranging a span of 878 days, just short of the three-year length of a potential human mission to Mars, were analyzed to find the rates at which astronauts consumed various logistics supplies. From this analysis we have found that contrary to our own hypothesis, ‘food’ was not the largest portion of the supplied mass. Instead, ‘Environmental Control and Life Support Systems’ (ECLSS) contributed 34% of the overall supplied mass, followed by ‘Science and Outfitting,’ which contributed 29%. Food totaled less than a quarter (21% of the resupplied mass, while other items of focus in mass reduction efforts such as ‘Hygiene’ (6%), ‘Clothing’ (3%), and ‘Operational Supplies’ (4%) each contributed less than a tenth of the supplied mass. This data suggests that by categorizing and analyzing the data based on an alternative taxonomy and analyzing the full supply manifests rather than handpicked items, we have revealed unexpectedly significant items which had not been previously tracked by exploration logistics efforts. For example, toilet hardware made up 4% of ECLSS mass, and laptop hardware and multi-tools each made up 10% of operational supplies mass. Additionally, the ‘Specialized Clothing’ subcategory containing fire protective equipment, coveralls, and penguin suits made up 15% of the overall clothing mass. By identifying these newly found significant items, we can create more realistic mass estimates for exploration missions and direct mass reduction efforts to new areas, potentially leading to lower future mission masses.

Logistics↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Modeling Electrolytic O2 Recovery from Metabolic CO2 for Advanced Closed Loop Life Support Systems in Extraterrestrial Human Missions

The International Space Station (ISS) is currently equipped with a complex, heavy, and power consuming system that recovers approximately 50% of O2 from metabolic CO2. Future long duration human missions to the Moon and Mars will necessitate a sustainable and highly efficient metabolic oxygen recovery system capable of yielding a minimum of 75% O2 recovery. A Macrofluidic Electrochemical Reactor (MFECR) technology development effort is currently underway at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) to significantly increase current metabolic O2 recovery efficiency, expand mission sustainability, and reduce complexity of the system. The novel design combines CO2 conversion to O2 along with C2H4 as byproduct and water electrolysis (currently conducted in two separate units) into a single compact unit that runs at standard conditions and is theoretically capable of generating O2 with a theoretical maximum metabolic CO2 conversion of 73% while consuming less than metabolic water. This paper presents a comprehensive multi-physic 3D model developed at MSFC on CO2 conversion to O2 and C2H4 at standard conditions via MFECR. The 3D spatial domain of the model is a replica of the actual MFECR’s 3D drawing generated for the MFECR fabrication and operated to recover O2 from CO2 yielding C2H4 as byproduct. Electrochemical (EC) physics that includes EC multicomponent reaction mechanisms, mass transport, and electrical current density distributions is coupled in the model with all the other physics phenomena involved in the MFECR’s process, such as two-phase flow, free and porous fluid regimes, multicomponent mass transfer, heat transfer, and DC electrical current generation along with Joule heating effect. The EC reaction sections of the MFECR consists of two porous gas diffusion electrodes (GDE) and an electrolyte serpentine channel sandwiched in the middle. The CO2 feeds the cathode serpentine channel and part of the O2 product is fed back to the anode serpentine chamber. An alkaline solution feeds the electrolyte serpentine chamber wetting the GDEs of both, the anode and cathode allowing the OH- ionic transport between them. The EC reactions in the cathode’s GDE yield C2H4 from CO2 and H2 from water while the EC reaction in the anode’s GDE yields O2. The authors will present in this paper the validation of the model using experimental data and the utilization of the validated model in building a reliable simulator that will not only assist the authors on the MFECR design but also the optimization of its operation in the ISS and future spatial human missions.

Jesus A Dominguez↗

NASA NTRS2000

A Single-Chip Programmable Digital CMOS Imager with Enhanced Low Light Detection Capability

Low-power, low-cost, miniature and integrated digital imaging systems are expected to be widely used in consumer electronics in the near future. While CMOS technology has been responsible for the phenomenal growth in consumer electronics, micro-porcessors, memory, audio systems, and radio-frequency circuits (e.g. cellular phones), till recently, the video technology remained outside this mainstream.

digital↗

NASA NTRS1996

Progress in Voltage and Current Mode On-Chip Analog-to-Digital converters for CMOS Image Sensors

Two 8 bit successive approximation analog-to-digital converter (ADC) designs and a 12 bit current mode incremental sigma delta ADC have been designed, fabricated, and tested. The successive approximation test chip designs are compatible with active pixel sensor (APS) column parallel architectures with a 20.4 ??itch in a 1.2 ??-well CMOS process and a 40 ??itch in a 2 ??-well CMOS process. The successive approximation designs consume as little as 49 ??t a 500 KHz conversion rate meeting the low power requirements inherent in column parallel architectures. The current mode incremental sigma-delta ADC test chips designed to be multiplied among 8 columns in a semi-column parallel current mode APS architecture. The higher accuracy ADC consumes 800 ??t a 5 KHz.

analog-to-digital↗

NASA NTRS2018

Mission Summary of Cassini Spacecraft Guidance and Control Hardware Health and Performance

The Cassini-Huygens mission ended on September 15, 2017, after nearly two decades in ight. The well-designed Cassini spacecraft had robust hardware that permitted two extended missions, lasting nine years longer than the expected prime mission. At the end of the mission, the Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem (AACS) was using two pieces of redundant back-up of hardware, one reaction wheel and the hydrazine thruster branch, due to hardware anomalies earlier in the mission. The back-up hardware performed nominally through the rest of mission. The prime reaction wheels at the end of the mission had reached more than 130% of the consumable limit for number of revolutions. No thruster on either thruster branch accumulated more than 45% of the consumable limits. The inertial reference unit slightly exceeded the pre-launch requirements on bias error, but as the software continuously estimated this value in ight, the attitude estimation was not adversely a ected. The star trackers performed nominally, and though there was a spacecraft anomaly in 1998 related to the star trackers, the origin was not in hardware itself. The Sun sensors and accelerometer both performed as expected and met all requirements throughout the mission. Ultimately, the lifetime of the Cassini spacecraft was not limited by hardware performance. Planetary protection requirements necessitated the end of the mission as the spacecraft's propellant reserves depleted, and Cassini plunged into Saturn's atmosphere with a healthy attitude control system.

Stupik, Joan↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

An Overview of the Lunar Water ISRU Measurement Study (LWIMS)

NASA announced plans for the Artemis program, which would send crewed missions to the Moon by 2024 and achieve a sustainable lunar presence by 2028 [1]. To carry out sustained crewed surface operations, In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), which would use lunar resources to produce mission consumables, will be critical. Water-bearing materials have been identified at both lunar poles and are often associated with Permanently Shadowed Regions (PSRs). These constitute a geological resource that may or may not be convertible to reserves with additional exploration. This water could provide both fuel and oxygen for refueling vehicles as well as life support consumables. However, the nature and extent of this resource is not well understood. Detection of water alone is not adequate for ISRU planning. For this reason, NASA chartered the Lunar Water ISRU Measurement Study (LWIMS). The goal of this study was to assess and define the type, amount, and fidelity of the measurements needed to select mining locations for lunar water ISRU and to define resource-related requirements for ISRU hardware development and architectures (mining operations, hardware emplacement, concept of operations).

Julie Kleinhenz↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

DRF: A Software Architecture for a Data Marketplace to Support Advanced Air Mobility

Advanced Air Mobility is a new aviation vision, where unmanned aerial systems will trans- port passengers and cargo across urban and rural areas. Critical to the realization of this vision is the development of a digital marketplace, which allows service providers and consumers operating in the airspace ecosystem to securely exchange data and reasoning insights. In this paper, we present the architecture of a decentralized data marketplace that connects data and reasoning service providers to vehicles and other service consumers along the cloud-to-edge continuum. We also present two example use cases to demonstrate the value of our approach.

Autonomy↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Printed Flexible Sensors for NASA Applications

As human spaceflight pushes beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO), resupply of consumables becomes a significant challenge. One solution to this problem is In-Space Manufacturing (ISM), the capability to perform on-demand manufacturing and repair of consumables in an in-space environment. ISM offers significant flexibility to missions as it allows for a high degree of tailorability and reduction in launch mass. Leveraging advancements in fabrication, repair and recycling, ISM provides a highly sustainable and affordable solution to Exploration mission operations and logistics. In this talk, advances in printed electronics and sensors, ranging from nanomaterial ink development and hands-free fabrication methodologies to devices will be presented. Applications presented will include sensors for crew health monitoring, structural health monitoring and power generation.

sensors↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

In-Space Manufacturing to Support Human Spaceflight

As human spaceflight pushes beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO), resupply of consumables becomes a significant challenge. One solution to this problem is In-Space Manufacturing (ISM), the capability to perform on-demand manufacturing and repair of consumables in an in-space environment. ISM offers significant flexibility to missions as it allows for a high degree of tailor ability and reduction in launch mass. Leveraging advancements in fabrication, repair and recycling, ISM provides a highly sustainable and affordable solution to exploration mission operations and logistics. In this talk, advances in printed electronics and sensors, ranging from nanomaterial ink development and hands-free fabrication methodologies to devices will be presented. Applications presented will include sensors for crew health monitoring along with supporting electronics. In the future, these devices will be fabricated and characterized on the International Space Station and the approach will be evaluated for future in-space manufacturing to support human spaceflight.

nanotechnology↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Effectiveness of Power Distribution Systems for Deployment on the Lunar Surface

Lunar habitation missions are currently being planned to have astronauts return to the moon by the mid 2020’s with a sustained lunar presence by the end of the decade. The various landed modules needed to support the missions are expected to be distributed around Shackleton Crater at distances ranging from 1 to 15 km and with power needs ranging from 10 kW to 50kW. Current plans call for a solar array to be installed on the rim of the crater that receives near-constant sunlight year around with a power distribution system that transfers power from the source to consumers. This paper details several power distribution systems: DC transmission lines, radio frequency power beaming, and optical power beaming. Sizing algorithms for each of these distributions systems along with their necessary subsystems were developed from literature and subject matter expertise input. Several experiments were then conducted to determine the performance of the systems along with their sensitivities to changes in assumptions for various sub-components. The defined Figures of Merit enable mission designers to select the best power distribution system for each possible power consumer mission scenario. The experimental results were analyzed and compiled into a set of figures that highlight the conditions for which a certain system outperforms the other.

Bradford Robertson↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Effectiveness of Power Distribution Systems for Deployment on the Lunar Surface

Bradford Robertson↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Alternate Fecal Canister Development, Design, Testing, and Flight Demonstration on ISS

The Alternate Fecal Canister (AFC) is an alternative to the hard-sided Fecal Canister (FC) used by the Universal Waste Management System (UWMS), to contain fecal waste, clean-up consumables, gloves and packaging materials. The AFC is constructed of a flexible, odor-tight material and can be reduced to a significantly smaller volume than the FC for launch and is significantly lighter than the FC. The project tested a wide range of materials for containing fecal waste including many used in various forms by the public, military, and aerospace industry in a variety of applications. Designed to interface with the UWMS with no modifications to the on-orbit hardware, the AFC will be tested on ISS with the UWMS in a technology demonstration (TD). This paper will summarize the feasibility testing of the candidate materials along with final selection criteria, design elements for the final configuration, and final calculations on volume and mass savings. It will provide details gleaned from the TD regarding interface with the UWMS, crew operations, and odor control effectiveness. It will also describe the technology demonstration benefits and how that data informs the Orion-installed UWMS unit and future manifesting of consumables for both Orion and ISS.

life support↗