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Past spacecraft life support systems have used open-loop technologies that were simple and sufficiently reliable to demonstrate the feasibility of crewed spaceflight. A critical technology area needing development in support of both long duration missions and the establishment of lunar or planetary bases is regenerative life support. The subject of this paper is an ongoing study for a conceptual design of a Lunar-Base Controlled Ecological Life Support System (LCELSS) to support a crew size ranging from 4 to 100. An initial description of the LCELSS subsystems is provided within the framework of the conceptual design. The system design includes both plant (algae and higher plant) and animal species as potential food sources.

The Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) Emulator is under development at the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) with the purpose to investigate computer simulations of integrated CELSS operations involving humans, plants, and process machinery. This paper describes Version 1.0 of the CELSS Emulator that was initiated in 1988 on the JSC Multi Purpose Applications Console Test Bed as the simulation framework. The run module of the simulation system now contains a CELSS model called BLSS. The CELSS Emulator empowers us to generate model data sets, store libraries of results for further analysis, and also display plots of model variables as a function of time. The progress of the project is presented with sample test runs and simulation display pages.

This paper describes the results of a study to develop a conceptual design for an experimental, closed-loop fluid handling system capable of monitoring, controlling, and supplying nutrient solution to higher plants. The Plant Feeder Experiment (PFX) is designed to be flight tested in a micro-gravity (micro-g) environment and was developed under NASA's In-Space Technology Experiments Program (INSTEP). When flown, PFX will provide information on both the generic problems of micro-g fluid handling and the specific problems associated with the delivery of nutrient solution in a micro-g environment. The experimental hardware is designed to fit into two middeck lockers on the Space Shuttle, and incorporates several components that have previously been flight tested.