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Continuous removal of carbon dioxide is one of the most critical processes in a spacecraft air revitalization system. Recovery of the waste carbon dioxide and its subsequent conversion to oxygen become essential for long-duration human space missions beyond Low-Earth orbit where re-supply of consumables such as oxygen is neither practical nor economical. The current CO2 removal technology employed in the United States Operating Segment (USOS) of the International Space Station (ISS) operates in an open loop mode where the waste CO2 is vented to space. A compressor is required to facilitate CO2 recovery capabilities. The CO2 removal process itself is one of the most energy-intensive processes in the life support system of the ISS due to the water vapor recovery method involved in the process. This paper discusses the design and development of a low-power CO2 removal system that has capabilities to recover and compress the CO2 for recycling oxygen.

The International Space Station's air revitalization system operates in an open loop mode and relies on the re-supply of oxygen and other consumables from earth for the life support of astronauts. A compressor is required to deliver the carbon dioxide from a removal assembly to a reduction unit to recover oxygen and close the oxygen loop. We have developed a temperature-swing adsorption compressor (TSAC) that is energy efficient, quiet, and has no rapidly moving parts for performing these tasks. The TSAC has the capability to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from a low-pressure source, and subsequently store, compress, and deliver it at a higher pressure as required by a processor. As such, the TSAC is an excellent candidate for interfacing CO2 removal and reduction units in the air revitalization loop of a spacecraft for oxygen recovery. A TSAC that uses air as a cooling medium was developed and tested at NASA Ames Research Center.

The current CO2 removal technology of NASA is very energy intensive and contains many non-optimized subsystems. This paper discusses the concept of a next-generation, membrane-integrated, adsorption processor for CO2 removal and compression in closed-loop air revitalization systems. The membrane module removes water from the feed, passing it directly into the processor's exhaust stream; it replaces the desiccant beds in the current four-bed molecular sieve system, which must be thermally regenerated. Moreover, in the new processor, CO2 is removed and compressed in a single two-stage unit. This processor will use much less power than NASA's current CO2 removal technology and will be capable of maintaining a lower CO2 concentration in the cabin than that can be achieved by the existing CO2 removal systems.

A habitat for housing up to 32 Tenebrionid, black body beetles (Trigonoscelis gigas Reitter) has been developed at Ames Research Center for conducting studies to evaluate the effects of long duration spaceflight upon insect circadian timing systems. This habitat, identified as the Beetle Kit, provides an automatically controlled lighting system and activity and temperature recording devices, as well as individual beetle enclosures. Each of the 32 enclosures in a Beetle Kit allows for ad lib movement of the beetle as well as ventilation of the beetle enclosure via an externally operated hand pump. Two Beetle Kits were launched on STS-84 (Shuttle-Mir Mission-06) on May 15, 1997 and were transferred to the Priroda module of the Russian Mir space station on May 18 as part of the NASA/Mir Phase 1 Science Program. Following the Progress collision with Spektr on June 25, the Kits were transferred to the Kristall module. The beetles will remain on Mir for approximately 135 days.