Technical Paper
Design Status of ARES for Accommodation on the ISS
2006-07-17
2006-01-2270
During the last years extensive work has been done to design and develop the Closed Loop Air Revitalization System ARES. The potential of ARES for future space exploration missions is to significantly reduce the water upload demand, increase the safety of the crew by reducing dependency on re-supply flights and, due to the launch mass restraints, make future exploration missions to other planets possible. The ARES demonstrator includes the functions of CO2 concentration, CO2 reduction and oxygen generation. Whereas in previous phases ARES was designed to operate in NODE3 of the ISS, this has been changed to an intended ARES operation in the Russian Multifunctional Laboratory Module MLM. This year’s activities concentrated on process optimization of the Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CCA) interaction with the Sabatier Reactor (CRA), extreme conditions testing, life time tests with the Sabatier Reactor and the oxygen generation stack and system testing.