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Lunar base construction study has been conducted under the sponsorship of many Japanese industries to amend the man tended lunar outpost study carried by NASDA. Permanent lunar base construction is to be constrained by the ability of the usable transportation system carrying the basic modules composing lunar base itself. Based upon the experiences of Antarctic Research Expedition and of designing International Space Station now going on it was assumed the initial permanent lunar base has to be composed of two habitats and one power module for letting possible to alive 8 crews, and has to be expanded by adding three or four modules in every year for improving the easiness of livingness. In early stage of construction, crew members have to live and work using only two habitat modules with getting the electric power from power module, therefore the minimum self support functions except the food and oxygen supplying have to be attached to the habitat modules.

System configurations of water recycling for space use have been continued through theoretical and experimental studies. The water recycling system plays a central role in a Closed Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) which offers necessary environment and life styles in closed environment such as space stations, lunar bases, etc.. Membrane technology is a possible candidate for purifying waste water produced by crew use facility, plant cultivation facility, etc. In considerations of the system compactness realizing energy saving, membrane distillation has been revealed to be a suitable purification process. Ground experiments has been performed using membrane filtration processes and membrane distillation process. Thermopervaporation technology with hydrophobic membrane is utilized in the distillation process. The energy saving is achieved by thermal return of condensation energy.

Many research activities relating the environment control and life support systems to be used in space have been conducted and continued in Japan since 1982 in order to obtain his own manned flight technologies for future Japanese missions. Research and development activities are able to be divided in two phases according mission scheduling such as JEM development to be used in International Space Station now going on and the future Japanese space infrastructures, for examples, Japanese Space Station and Lunar Base. Temperature, humidity, total atmospheric pressure and partial pressure of oxygen and carbon dioxide, necessary for all living things, are to be controlled by the environment control function.

In the closed environments such as manned space station, it is necessary to remove contaminant gas to keep a suitable environment. Removal of gaseous contaminants generated from crew, animals, and plants is important function to keep the environment below the allowable level in the Closed Ecology Experiment Facilities (abbreviated as CEEF). CEEF consist of three modules for habitat, animal and plant, the supporting facilities for each module and a plant cultivation facility. CEEF are scheduled to be constructed from 1994 in Aomori Prefecture, northern part of Japan. For designing Trace Contaminant Control Assembly (TCCA) for CEEF, the following six (6) trace contaminants have been selected as major contaminant gas in CEEF; Ammonia (NH3) Methane (CH4) Ethylene (C2H4) Carbon Monoxide (CO) Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) Ethylene is well-known as an aggressive contaminant to plant growth and maturity.

In order to prolong the duration of manned missions around the earth and to expand the human existing region from the earth to other planets such as a Lunar Base or a manned Mars flight mission, the CELSS becomes an essential factor of the future technology to be developed through utilization of Space Station. The preliminary SE&I (System Engineering and Integration) efforts regarding CELSS have been carried out by the Japanese CELSS concept study group for clarifying the feasibility of hardware development for Space Station Experiments and for getting the time phased mission sets after Fy 1992. The results of these studies are breifly summarized and thereafter, the design and utilization methods of a Gas Recycle System for CELSS experiments are discussed.