Environmental Control and Life Support System Developed for Deep Space Travel

NASA outlined plans to journey from the current Low Earth Orbit toward earth independent exploration, evolving habitat capacity to support a trip to Mars, a planetary visit, and return home 3 years later. The Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) are being developed to enable this vision. UTAS completed the first phase of this advancement, or NextSTEP, in September 2016, and is currently working on the second phase design for a universal ECLSS Module to support the different habitats.

The team defined an evolutionary path that advances a 90-day Cislunar ECLSS toward a deep space, 1,100-day configuration. Integral to this configuration are: a Universal ECLSS Pallet design that enhances in-flight maintenance and, Integrated ECLSS Control System that enables the use of Machine Learning algorithms, intelligent sensors, and a state-of-the-art cross-pallet communication.

The overarching design activities included in this effort define a time dependent strategy enabling deep space exploration.