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In the second half of the 2004, Thales Alenia Space - Italia started an Advanced Live Support Research & Development program denominated Recyclab, on own funding. The main objectives of the Recyclab program are: To determine the actual development needs and possibilities in the international scenario in the Advanced Life Support field To develop new technologies for the regeneration of the main resources in exploration missions (water, air, waste) To test the technologies developed in closed loop in an integrated system.

The Bioregenerative Life Support program CAB (Controllo Ambientale Biorigenerativo) is a key element of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) Medicine & Biotechnology scientific program, set forth in the ASI Activity Plan 2006-2008 [01], [02], [03]. The CAB program team performed a one-year feasibility study of a controlled biological life support system (BLSS), allowing the regeneration of resources and the production of food for life support in long duration missions, under the prime contractorship of Thales Alenia Space - Italia, defining: State of art in the field Functional and technical requirements for the BLSS Functional architecture and preliminary sizing of a BLSS for planetary surface Development plan with associated scientific activities and technological demonstration.

ExoMars is the first mission in ESA's Aurora Exploration Programme. ExoMars will pursue important science and technology objectives aimed at extending Europe's capabilities in planetary exploration. ExoMars will deploy a Rover carrying a suite of instruments dedicated to exobiology and geology research. The Rover will travel several kilometres searching for traces of past and present signs of life, collecting and analysing samples from within surface rocks and from the subsurface, down to a depth of 2 metres. The planetary protection policy of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) and the particular sensitivity of the life detection investigations establish stringent contamination control constraints for the ExoMars mission. Particulate, molecular and bioburden contamination control beyond the level of standard spacecraft is required for the flight system as well as for the assembly, test, and launch environment.

In the frame of the space food production research activities conducted in the Thales Alenia Space Italia (TAS-I) Advanced Life Support Research and Development laboratory (RecycLAB, [6]), and with the contribution of a degree thesis developed in collaboration with the Politecnico of Torino, a rack-like facility for ground research on Life Support Systems based on Plants has been designed, developed, integrated, verified and tested in TAS-I. The new facility, called EDEN EPISODE 2, is a significant evolution of a previous TAS-I project (EDEN EPISODE 1) and takes benefit from other lower size TAS-I demonstrators (CUBE). It aims at realizing a completely closed and controlled environment for crop production, while a mobile lighting panel allows to maximize the delivered light in each phase of the plant life cycle. Hydroponic and aeroponic techniques have been implemented in the project for nutrient delivery to the plant roots.

The forthcoming planetary missions will require a large amount of resources, among which food is of paramount importance. The capability to implement a meaningful food production must be achieved not only controlling the complete crop production chain but also providing the large volumes required for the scope. Alcatel Alenia Space-Italia (AAS-I) with a team of partners are working in both directions, via design and development of plant growth facilities and of inflatable structures providing large volumes to host the cultivation system. This paper presents the status currently reached, the lessons learnt and future works.

Aim of the Closed Habitat Environmental Control Sensors (CHECS) project has been the setting up of a complete, lightweight sensing system for monitoring the ambient conditions of plant growth in space missions. A complete sensor system has been developed and tested, based on a deep knowledge of plant needs, and on the typical plant behaviour in stress conditions. The main characteristic of the system is its compatibility with Silicon technology. This means high integrability, reduced dimensions, low weight, redundancy, simplicity and high reliability. All the sensors composing the systems have been produced by means of well developed solid state technology, including the MicroSystem Technology (MST) and Porous Silicon Technology (PST). The latter has proved in the last year to have considerable advantages over other approaches.