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Huntsville, Alabama (SPX) Feb 9, 2006 NASA is preparing to send a new oxygen-generation system to the International Space Station that uses water to generate breathable oxygen for crew members. The agency said the life-support system will be necessary for future long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars. "Delivering this hardware to the space station is a major step toward achieving the full potential of the complex," Mike Suffredini, the station's program manager, said in a statement. "Once complete, the regenerative life support system will sustain additional crew members onboard that can conduct more scientific research. It also will give us experience operating and sustaining a 'closed-loop' life support system similar to that necessary for future human spaceflight missions farther from Earth." The system - which was designed and tested by engineers from Marshall Space Flight Center and from Hamilton Sundstrand Space Systems International in Windsor Locks, Conn. - is designed to operate with little monitoring. It is supposed to replace oxygen lost during experiments and airlock depressurization. It can provide up to 20 pounds of oxygen daily - enough to support six station crew members - although during current operations its output will be about 12 pounds daily. The system will tap into the station's water supply and separate its constituent hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The hydrogen will be pushed into space, leaving the oxygen for the crew. "Advancing life-support technology will become increasingly important as we pursue missions to the Moon and Mars," said Bob Bagdigian, project manager at Marshall's Center for the Regenerative Environmental Control and Life Support System. A new water-recovery system is planned for shipment to Kennedy early next year, after testing and design modifications are completed, NASA officials said. That system will provide clean water by recycling waste and crew member urine. The recycled water must meet purity standards before it can be used to support crew, payload and spacewalk activities, officials explained. The system will be packaged into three refrigerator-sized racks for installation in the station's U.S. Destiny lab module. At present, the ISS relies on a combination of expendable and limited regenerative life-support technologies in Destiny and the Russian Zvezda service module. Officials said the advanced regenerative environmental control and life-support systems will help cut station operating costs, because the station will no longer need fresh supplies of air, water and expendable life-support equipment from Earth, or the return of used equipment to the surface. NASA shipped the new oxygen-regeneration system Jan. 24 from Marshall to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it arrived the next day. Engineers will install it in a pressurized cargo compartment later this month for a possible May launch aboard shuttle Discovery. Related Links ISS at NASA
Spacesuit Overboard
Houston TX (SPX) Feb 06, 2006Space station crew members released a spacesuit-turned-satellite during the second spacewalk of their mission on Friday. Called SuitSat, the device was supposed to transmit the recorded voices of schoolchildren to amateur radio operators worldwide. It did so faintly for a brief period before it ceased sending signals, Johnson Space Center officials reported.
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