Evaluation of Bio-regenerative Life Support Systems in the frame of a Concurrent International Cooperation

Abstract

With concurrent interests on Bio-regenerative Life Support Systems (BLSS), Italian and USA industrial and academic institutions, including Thales Alenia Spac e Italia (TAS-I), the University of Arizona (UA) an d the Sadler Machine Company have teamed in a collaboration effort. The collaboration has been providing personnel exchanges, sharing accumulated experiences and complementary competencies to establish synergies in the multi-dis ciplinary field of BLSS. The initial phase has linked aerosp ace engineering and system design competences together with other professional fields of plant sciences, controlled e nvironment production systems, mathematical modeling and computational analysis. The overriding theme of our activities is the succe ssful crop production, with effective resources uti lization, such that sufficient edible biomass will be continu ously provided to supply the desired percentage of the crew food calories from the system. The focus is mainly with crops targeted for space such as lettuce, sweet pot ato and tomato. Using available data and existing models, crop prod uction studies have been designed and implemented to achieve production results within a semi-closed structure t hat will be useful for correlation studies, as well as for strengthening the experiences with an operational p rototype BLSS. While the EDEN controlled plant growth chamber sited at TAS-I Recyclab has been operated to focus TAS-I engineers attention on the critical physical and biological aspects on a small scale demonstrator, the 22 m 3 Lunar Greenhouse (LGH) Prototype, sited at the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center (CEAC) at the University of Arizona (UA), has been upgraded and prepared for 9months of extensive utilization, supported by the N ASA Steckler Space Grant (Phase 1, January ‐ October 2010). Data will be evaluated within a TAS-I implemented model for the plant-life-support element, based on t he NASA Modified Energy Cascade (MEC) Model for Crop Growth 19,21 . Testing is in progress and data acquisition, management, utilization and improvements of the models will be completed. The subsequent system simul ations will be used for developing future designs of such facil ities. This paper describes the collaboration, focusing on the available facilities improvement, the definiti on of the data gathering, storage and elaboration strategies, the discussion of the preliminary results achieved and the illustration of the forthcoming activities.