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Future human-tended space missions will require advances in life support technology. Designers must consider enhancing the capabilities of traditional physicalchemical life support technology by adding bioregenerative elements. Limitations placed on total mass will force life support components to be compact, reliable, energy efficient, and autonomous. Such systems must operate with minimal human interaction, while providing manual controls as needed. The control and monitor components of such systems will need to exhibit a high degree of intelligence, flexibility, and adaptability to environmental conditions. The NASA Advanced Life Support (ALS) Program at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) has been engaged in the Advanced Life Support Advanced Control Technology (ALSACT) Project, an effort to build a computer system that will meet the above criteria.

Advanced life support systems require computer controls which deliver a high degree of reliability and autonomy and meet life support criteria. Such control systems must allow crewmembers on long-term missions to perform their scientific and engineering duties while minimizing interactions with life support systems. Control systems must be the “brains” of life support systems providing air, water, edible biomass, and recycling services. They must establish and maintain life support components in an optimized manner, providing self-sufficient infrastructures independent of Earth-based resupply. The CELSS (Controlled Ecological Life Support System) Breadboard Project has implemented such a computerized component of a future mission. The Universal Networked Data Acquisition and Control Engine (UNDACE) is the software interface between humans and hardware controlling plant growth experiments.