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The NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training in Advanced Life Support (ALS/NSCORT) Education and Outreach Program is designed to engage audiences through concepts and technologies highlighted in the NSCORT research program. The outreach program is composed of three thrust areas. These areas are technical outreach (graduate education, technology transfer, presentations to industry, etc.), educational outreach (professional development, undergraduate, K-12), and public outreach (museums, state fairs, etc.) Program design of the technical and educational outreach began in January 2003. This paper reports anecdotal data on one ALS/NSCORT outreach program and gives a brief description of the other programs in their pilot stages. Technical and educational outreach programs developed to date include: 1) Summer Fellowship Research Program, 2) Distance Learning Course, 3) Key Learning Community Collaborative Project and 4) Mission to Mars.

The ALS/NSCORT Education and Outreach provides an avenue to engage and educate higher education students and K-12 educators/students in the center's investigations of the synergistic concepts and principles required for regenerative life-support in extended-duration space exploration. The following K-12 Education programs will be addressed: 1) Key Learning Community Project provides exposure, mentoring and research opportunities for 9-12th grade students at Key Learning Community This program was expanded in 2004 to include an “Explore Mars” 3-day camp experience for 150 Key students. The overall goal of the collaborative project is to motivate students to pursue careers in science, technology, and engineering; 2) Mission to Mars Program introduces 5th-8th grade students to the complex issues involved with living on Mars, stressing the interdisciplinary fundamentals of science, technology and engineering that underlie Advanced Life Support research.

A detailed study was conducted on nitrification using a bench top bioprocessor system proposed for water recycling of a urine-soap wastewater expected to be generated by crewmembers on International Space Station (ISS) or similar long-term space missions. The bioprocessor system consisted of two packed bed biofilm reactors; one anoxic reactor used for denitrification and one aerobic reactor used for nitrification. lnfluent wastewater was a mixture of dilute NASA whole body soap (2,300 mg/L) and urea (500 mg/L as organic nitrogen). During two months of steady-state operation, average chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal was greater than 95%, and average total nitrogen removal was 70%. We observed that high levels of nitrite consistently accumulated in the aerobic (nitrifying) reactor effluent, indicating incomplete nitrification as the typical end product of the reaction would be nitrate.