State of NASA Oxygen Recovery

Life support is a critical function of any crewed space vehicle or habitat. One of the key elements of life support is the provision of oxygen to the crew. For missions close to Earth oxygen may be resupplied from the ground but as we look at exploring further out into the solar system for longer periods of time oxygen recovery from metabolic CO2 becomes a priority to minimize resupply requirements and enable feasible mission architectures. For more than half a century NASA has perused the development of technology to enable oxygen recovery from metabolic CO2. Development work has included Bosch, Sabatier, and CO2 electrolysis systems and more recently plasma reactors, ionic liquids, and other exotic processes. NASA’s historical oxygen recovery work as well as the current state of oxygen recovery work currently going on within the agency is presented and discussed.