NASA Exploration Life Support: ELS Home

EXPLORATION LIFE SUPPORT OVERVIEW

Exploration Life Support (ELS) is a technology development project under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Exploration Technology Development Program (ETDP). The ELS Project includes four technical elements: Atmosphere Revitalization Systems, Water Recovery Systems, Waste Management Systems and Habitation Engineering, and two cross cutting elements, Systems Integration, Modeling and Analysis, and Validation and Testing. The ELS Project is closely connected to its customer, the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate’s Constellation Program, which establishes requirements, defines technology needs, and reviews and advocates tasks within ELS’s technology development portfolio.

Goal:

To develop and mature a suite of Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) technologies for potential use on human spacecraft under development by NASA’s Constellation Program in support of United States Space Exploration Policy. Technology development is targeted at the following vehicles: Crew Exploration Vehicle (Orion), Lunar Lander (Altair Project), Lunar habitats and pressurized rovers (Lunar Surface Systems Project).

Objectives:

Develop and mature life support system technologies that meet mission requirements and fill capability gaps (enabling) or significantly improve the state-of-the-art (enhancing).
Develop technologies for infusion by the date for each vehicle’s Preliminary Design Review (PDR), approximately six years before flight. Provide information by System Requirements Review (SRR) and at other interim milestones.
Develop technologies that are efficient with respect to resource requirements (mass, power, heat rejection, volume, crew time, consumables) and are safe and reliable.

Flowchart of Advanced Environmental Control and Life Support Systems that recycle consumables

Future space vehicles will require functional, safe, reliable and efficient life support system technologies to maintain crew health and well-being. A flowchart of top-level ECLSS functions is depicted above. The ELS Project’s chief objective is to develop and mature relevant technologies that meet mission requirements and fill capability gaps or significantly improve the efficiency, safety, and reliability over the state-of-the-art, providing risk reduction and developmental economy to flight projects.

Exploration Life Support (ELS) was among 18 original projects initiated under NASA’s Exploration Technology Development Program (ETDP) chartered late in 2005 to perform research and technology development (R&TD) toward meeting specific critical architectural functional needs initially identified by the Exploration Systems Architecture Study and updated yearly by Constellation Program customers.

Related Sites

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