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Future NASA manned missions to the moon and Mars will require development of robust regenerative life support system technologies which offer high reliability and minimal resupply. To support the development of such systems, early ground-based test facilities will be required to demonstrate integrated, long-duration performance of candidate regenerative air revitalization, water recovery, and thermal management systems. The advanced life support Systems Integration Research Facility (SIRF) is one such test facility currently being developed at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC). The SIRF, when completed, will accommodate unmanned and subsequently manned integrated testing of advanced regenerative life support technologies at ambient and reduced atmospheric pressures.

The NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC), in conjunction with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), evaluated the impact of an animal science experiment on the Space Station environmental control and life support system (ECLSS). The LaRC-developed ECLSS computer-aided analysis capabilities were used for the evaluation. Equivalent crew size parameters were developed for an animal colony consisting of 96 rodents and 8 squirrel monkeys selected by NASA GSFC as a representative complement for life science research on board the NASA Space Station. Thirteen ECLSS options, along with the analysis assumptions, were established for reclaiming metabolic oxygen (O2) and waste water. In addition, both dedicated and shared options included facilities that were common to both the animal and the crew. The ECLSS options were compared against the Space Station ECLSS baseline provided at the interface requirement review (IRR) at the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) in 1986.