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The design of the Environmental Control System (ECS) of the COLUMBUS Attached Pressurized Module (APM) has lately undergone a series of major modifications. These were on one side due to the increased technical maturity of the program and on the other side due to the agreed common understanding amongst the three partners (NASA/ESA/NASDA) that some functions need to be considered at overall Space Station level and therefore their relevant implementation shall have an high level of commonality. A typical example was the introduction of a set of fire detection and suppression requirements which, being jointly applicable to the US, European and Japanese modules, led to significant modification of the APM internal architecture. The implementation of a similar design for the fire detection and suppression function ensures a unified approach for the safety management of the Space Station under emergency conditions related to these particular hazards.

The advent of permanently operating space laboratories as part of the International Space Station Freedom raises challenging requirements also for the thermal and environmental control of those laboratories. Enhanced crew size, power dissipation due to a broad range of experiments, flexibility with respect to payload reconfiguration and rack interchangeability, to name only a few, typically are such requirements. The paper is devoted to the analysis of these requirements and related conceptual design solutions in the light of overall system aspects with special emphasis on the permanently Attached Laboratory of the European Columbus Programme. In particular the following subjects will be addressed: loops concept factors like parallel /serial /multi loop/single loop and reconfiguration of water cooling and air cooling loops.

Air loops play a key role in the Environmental Control and Life Support Subsystems (ECLSS) of manned spacecraft. They constitute the essential interface between the crew and those ECLSS assemblies which are responsible for crew safety, comfort and health. Further, air is required to cool avionics and other equipment of the vehicle during the relevant operational phases. Thereby, air loops establish the essential interface between the ECLSS and the Thermal Control Subsystem (TCS). The paper gives a classification of air loops features of laboratory modules and discusses the design implementation aspects of the various conceptual approaches. Features addressed are centralised - decentralised ECLSS, separated - combined air loops, subfloor architecture, cabin loop ventilation and rack cooling. Particular emphasis is laid on the presently envisaged design solutions of the COLUMBUS programme elements.

Environmental control and life support, ultimately tied to the presence of man in space is one of the key issues of the permanently manned space station initiated by the USA [1], [2].* Europe's participation in that programme is the COLUMBUS programme, the various elements and scenarios of which were subject of extensive studies [3], [4], [5]. This paper is devoted to the Environmental Control and Life Support Subsystem (ECLSS) of the Pressurized Module (PM), the latter being one of the COLUMBUS elements. The present COLUMBUS scenario for the PM comprises the PM either to be attached to the US Space Station (USSS), being one of the core elements of the USSS (integrated PM) or as a Man Tended Free Flyer (MTFF, a PM docked to the Resource Module, RM). The PM in the attached configuration is shown in Fig. 1. The present considerations center on the ECLSS of the PM in attached version which is taken as baseline.