Design of a Trash Compaction & Processing System (TCPS) for Waste Management and Logistics Reduction in Long Duration Spaceflight

The Trash Compaction & Processing System (TCPS) being developed by Sierra Space for long duration missions compresses, sterilizes, and recycles water from crew-generated standard trash. TCPS assists in solving complex logistical challenges for spaceflight by reducing needed volume for trash storage and consumable launch mass. Functions include compressing the waste into a more manageable tile, sterilizing the tile, recovering and recycling water from the waste, and the processing and cleaning of any gaseous byproducts. Sierra Space has leveraged our previous developmental systems to develop an integrated TCPS for use in the International Space Station (ISS) as a technology demonstration for future long-duration missions and capabilities. Numerous interfaces and systems onboard ISS will be used to verify the capabilities of TCPS for operation in future vehicles and missions, where resources in cooling, water management, and gas release may differ. This paper summarizes the design of the TCPS flight system, the concept of operations, and requirements of the flight system