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The Space Suit Water Membrane Evaporator (SWME) is a baseline heat rejection technology that was selected to develop the Constellation Program lunar suit. The Hollow Fiber (HoFi) SWME is being considered for service in the Constellation Space Suit Element Portable Life Support Subsystem to provide cooling to the thermal loop via water evaporation to the vacuum of space. Previous work [1] described the test methodology and planning that are entailed in comparing the test performance of three commercially available HoFi materials as alternatives to the sheet membrane prototype for SWME: (1) porous hydrophobic polypropylene, (2) porous hydrophobic polysulfone, and (3) ion exchange through nonporous hydrophilic-modified Nafion®.

The Spacesuit Water Membrane Evaporator (SWME) is the baseline heat rejection technology selected for development for the Constellation lunar suit. The first SWME prototype, designed, built, and tested at Johnson Space Center in 1999 used a Teflon hydrophobic porous membrane sheet shaped into an annulus to provide cooling to the coolant loop through water evaporation to the vacuum of space. This present study describes the test methodology and planning to compare the test performance of three commercially available hollow fiber materials as alternatives to the sheet membrane prototype for SWME, in particular, a porous hydrophobic polypropylene, and two variants that employ ion exchange through non-porous hydrophilic modified Nafion. Contamination tests will be performed to probe for sensitivities of the candidate SWME elements to ordinary constituents that are expected to be found in the potable water provided by the vehicle, the target feedwater source.

Three commercial off-the-shelf hollow fiber membrane evaporators, which were modified for low pressure, were tested as potential spacesuit water membrane evaporator (SWME) heat rejection technologies at pressures below 33 pascals in a vacuum chamber. Water quality was controlled in a series of 25 tests, first by simulating potable water that was reclaimed from wastewater and then by changing periodically to simulate the ever-concentrating make-up of the circulating coolant over that which is predicted over the course of 100 extravehicular activities. Two of the systems, which are comprised of nonporous tubes with hydrophilic molecular channels as the water vapor transport mechanism, were severely impacted by increasing concentrations of cations in the water. One of the systems, which was based on hydrophobic porous polypropylene tubes, was not affected by the degrading water quality or the presence of microbes. The polypropylene system, the SWME 1, was selected for further testing.

ASDA was developed to evaluate the heat and mass transfer characteristics of advanced pressurized suit design concepts for use in low pressure or vacuum planetary environments. The model incorporates a generalized 3-layer suit, constructed with the Systems Integrated Numerical Differencing Analyzer '85 (SINDA '85), with a 41- node FORTRAN routine that simulates the transient heat transfer and respiratory processes of a human body in a suited environment. User options for the suit include a liquid cooled garment, a removable jacket, a CO2/H2O permeable layer and a phase change layer. The model also has an option to isolate flowing oxygen in the helmet from stagnant or flowing gas in the torso and limbs. Options for the environment include free and forced convection with a user input atmosphere, incident solar/infrared fluxes, radiation to a background sink and radiation and conduction to a surface. Results from a study of Mars suit concepts will also be presented.

With new direction to return to the Moon, NASA is developing highly efficient and lightweight extravehicular activity (EVA) equipment for working on the rugged lunar terrain. This paper presents results and evaluations of lunar thermal environments and design challenges for the EVA system. The evaluations include a review of basic lunar environment data, a review of metabolic rate predictions, analyses and reviews of spacesuit heat leak effects in past designs, and methods to improve the performance of spacesuit-mounted radiators in a hot lunar environment. In addition to reviewing existing lunar thermal environment data, a simplified thermal model is presented that can simulate the lunar surface temperature variation as a function of latitude and time on the lunar surface. The assumed physical and optical properties of the lunar soil as well as the solar heating on the Earth's Moon are also presented.

A preliminary evaluation of several portable life support system (PLSS) concepts which could be used during the First Lunar Outpost (FLO) mission extravehicular activities (EVA's) has been performed. The weight, volume and consumables characteristics for the various PLSS concepts were estimated. Thermal effects of day and night EVA's on PLSS consumables usage and hardware requirements were evaluated. The benefit of adding a radiator and the total PLSS weight to be carried by the astronaut were also evaluated for each of the concepts. The results of the evaluation were used to provide baseline weight, volume and consumables characteristics of the PLSS to be used on the 45 day FLO mission. The benefit of radiators was shown to be substantial. Considerable consumables savings were predicted for EVA schedules with a high concentration of nighttime EVA's versus daytime EVA's.

A series of hot and cold thermal vacuum tests compared the radiation and contact conduction thermal performance of two Space Shuttle extravehicular pressure suit glove designs. An ambient test established the relationship between heat transfer and contact pressure. Contact with hot and cold objects was tolerated longer with an enhanced fingertip insulation design. The data obtained was used to correlate a glove model for predicting skin temperatures of advanced gloves in extreme extravehicular thermal environments.

A thermoelectric liquid cooling system recently developed at the Johnson Space Center was evaluated in manned and unmanned ground tests as an alternative to the Space Shuttle launch and entry suit personal fan. The liquid cooling system provided superior cooling in environments simulating flight deck conditions during launch and postlanding.