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After 11 months of successful operation onboard the ISS US laboratory Destiny, the air quality monitors ANITA (Analyzing Interferometer for Ambient Air) was brought back to Earth on STS126 (ULF2). ANITA is a technology demonstrator flight experiment for continuous air quality monitoring inside the crewed cabin of the ISS with low detection limits and high time resolution. For the first time, the dynamics of the detected trace gas concentrations could be directly resolved by ANITA and correlated to gas events in the cabin. The system is the result of a long term ESA technology development programme initiated more than seventeen years ago. The ANITA mission was a cooperative project between ESA and NASA. ESA's responsibilities were the provision of the H/W, the data acquisition and the data evaluation. NASA was responsible for the launch, accommodation and operation onboard ISS, data download and the transportation of ANITA back to the Earth.

This paper reports on the flight experiment ANITA (Analysing Interferometer for Ambient Air) and the development status of ANITA II. ANITA represents a precursor for ANITA II, a permanent continuous trace gas monitoring system on the International Space Station (ISS). For crew's safety the air analysers can detect and quantify quasi on-line and simultaneously 32 trace gases with ppm or sub-ppm detection limits. Thus, a crewed cabin air monitor is designed allowing the detection and monitoring of trace gas dynamics of a spacecraft atmosphere providing besides the continuous air monitoring activities, warning capability in case of malfunctions. ANITA will be accommodated in an Express Rack on US LAB Destiny. The transportation to ISS will be provided by Jules Verne, the first flight of the Automatic Transfer Vehicle (ATV) scheduled for May 2005. The more compact and improved measurement unit ANITA II is being designed for continuous air monitoring on ISS.