Urine Removal from Suited Crew in Orion Vehicle Depressurization Scenario

Humankind wants to continually venture deeper into space, but there are many hazards of deep space exploration. NASA’s Orion Program seeks to incrementally identify these hazards and begin addressing the difficulties of such long-duration missions. One of the largest risks and areas of focus in the program is crew survival in a vehicle cabin depressurization scenario. As part of proactive mitigation efforts, contingency operations and associated hardware are being developed to sustain crew members for up to 6 days. While the Orion launch and entry suit would provide the crew a pressurizable safe haven for that duration, additional systems are needed to handle crew waste management output for specific use with the suit. NASA’s Orion Crew Survival Systems and UTC Aerospace Systems are working together to develop and test an external suit system to aid in the evacuation of urine from their pressurized suit to ensure crew health and safety. This paper describes the recent and on-going design and testing that is driving hardware design towards eventual flight certification.