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During the last years extensive work has been done to design and develop the Closed-Loop Air Revitalization System ARES. The potential of ARES e.g. as part of the ISS ECLSS is to significantly reduce the water upload demand and to increase the safety of the crew by reducing dependence on re-supply flights. The design is adapted to the interfaces of the new base lined Russian MLM module as possible location for a future installation of ARES. Due to the lack of orbital support equipment and interfaces to a waste water bus, to a feed water supply line and due to the availability of only one single vent line it was necessary to make the ARES process water loop as independent as possible from the host vehicle. Another optimization effort was to match the CO2 desorption profile with the available hydrogen flow to achieve a sufficient water recovery performance, while meeting all related safety requirements, minimizing complexity and improving reliability.

The Closed-Loop Air REvitalisation System ARES is a regenerative life support system for closed habitats. With regenerative processes the ARES covers the life support functions: 1. Removal of carbon dioxide from the spacecraft atmosphere via a regenerative adsorption/desorption process, 2. Supply of breathable oxygen via electrolysis of water, 3. Catalytic conversion of carbon dioxide with hydrogen to water and methane. ARES will be accommodated in a double ISPR Rack which will contain all main and support functions like power and data handling and process water management. It is foreseen to be installed onboard the International Space Station (ISS) in the Columbus Module in 2013. After an initial technology demonstration phase ARES shall continue to operate thus enhancing the capabilities of the ISS Life Support System as acknowledged by NASA [5]. Due to its regenerative processes ARES will allow a significant reduction of water upload to the ISS.

The transportation sector in the United States is a major contributor to global energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission. To assess the future potentials of different technologies in addressing these two issues, we used a family of simulation programs to predict fuel consumption for passenger cars in 2020. The selected technology combinations that have good market potential and could be in mass production include: advanced gasoline and diesel internal combustion engine vehicles with automatically-shifting clutched transmissions, gasoline, diesel, and compressed natural gas hybrid electric vehicles with continuously variable transmissions, direct hydrogen, gasoline and methanol reformer fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles with direct ratio drive, and battery electric vehicle with direct ratio drive.

Diesel engines are more fuel efficient due to their high thermal efficiency, compared to gasoline engines and therefore, have a higher potential to reduce CO2 emissions. Since diesel engines emit higher amounts of Particulate Matter (PM), DPF systems have been introduced. Today, DPF systems have become a standard technology. Nevertheless, with more stringent NOx emission limits and CO2 targets, additional NOx emission control is needed. For high NOx conversion efficiency, SCR catalysts technology shows high potential. Due to higher temperature at the close coupled position and space restrictions, an integrated SCR concept on the DPFs is preferred. A high SCR catalyst loading will be required to have high conversion efficiency over a wide range of engine operations which causes high pressure for conventional DPF materials.

The MIT-based Mars Gravity Biosatellite payload engineering team has been engaged in designing and prototyping sensor and control systems for deployment within the rodent housing zone of the satellite, including novel video processing and atmospheric management tools. The video module will be a fully autonomous real-time analysis system that takes raw video footage of the specimen mice as input and distills those parameters which are of primary physiological importance from a scientific research perspective. Such signals include activity level, average velocity and rearing behavior, all of which will serve as indicators of animal health and vestibular function within the artificial gravity environment. Unlike raw video, these parameters require minimal storage space and can be readily transmitted to earth over a radio link of very low bandwidth.

Measurements were made of exhaust histories of the following species: unburned hydrocarbons (HC), carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitric oxide (NO). The measurements show that the exhaust flow can be divided into two distinct phases: a leading gas low in HC and high in NO followed by a trailing gas high in HC and low in NO. Calculations of time resolved equivalence ratio throughout the exhaust process show no evidence of a stratified combustion. The exhaust mass flow rate is time resolved by forcing the flow to be locally quasi-steady at an orifice placed in the exhaust pipe. The results with the quasi-steady assumption are shown to be consistent with the measurements. Predictions are made of time resolved mass flow rate which compare favorably to the experimental data base. The composition and flow histories provide sufficient information to calculate the time resolved flow rates of the individual species measured.

1 The Closed-Loop Air REvitalisation System ARES is a proof of technology Payload. The objective of ARES is to demonstrate with regenerative processes: the provision of the capability for carbon dioxide removal from the module atmosphere, the return supply of breathable oxygen within a closed-loop process, the conversion of the hydrogen, resulting from the oxygen generation via electrolysis, to water. The ARES Payload is foreseen to be installed - in 2012 - onboard the ISS in the Columbus Module. The operation of ARES - in a representative manned microgravity environment - will produce valuable operational data on a system which is based on technologies which are different from other air revitalization systems presently in use. The ARES Technology Demonstrator Payload development started in 2003 with a Phase B, see references [1], [2], [3] and [4]. ARES is presently in Phase C1 and a PDR is scheduled for the beginning of 2009.