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ESDMD #0304: Habitat Environmental Monitors and Capabilities to Support Deep Space Missions

In-situ monitoring of habitat water, air particulates, trace contaminants, microbes and acoustics, so that crews do not depend on returning samples to Earth (bin 2, rating 11 of 57). Today's practice is "mostly sample return for detailed analysis at Earth, with limited monitoring in space". The gap applies to Sustained Lunar Evolution and Humans to Mars, not to Foundational Exploration (Tech gaps spreadsheet, ESDMD #0304).

Quotations below are from row ESDMD #0304 of the tech gaps spreadsheet. ADD Rev C's Appendix D prints the same table for this gap, and it matches the row field for field (ADD Rev C, p. 213).

Description

"Long-duration or long-lifetime habitable elements without access to Earth-based analysis will require in-situ environmental monitoring to understand water quality, atmospheric particulate and contaminant content, microbial growth, and other measures to inform crew safety and crew response to off-nominal subsystem or mission events. The state of the art is mostly sample return for detailed analysis at Earth, with limited monitoring in space. Existing capabilities have either insufficient in-space capability or performance life for Moon and Mars mission durations."

Impacts and benefits: "Without gap closure, cislunar missions will have to return some samples for analysis with crew, which will delay hardware troubleshooting and increases crew exposure risks. Mars missions will lack detailed data for crew health, equipment monitoring, and troubleshooting. Increases detrimental health effects and decreases ability to effectively use limited spares to recover system upsets."

Current state of the art

"The ISS TOCA for in-flight water quality monitoring. For surfaces, collecting samples with a swab and the microbial profiles are obtained directly through sequencing. For water and air, samples are collected and cultured onboard and returned to Earth for identification analysis. NASA has supported work for bio regenerative life support systems. ISS flight demonstration of the Airborne Particulate Monitor. ISS Major Constituent Analyzer. ISS handheld acoustic monitors."

Performance target

  • Moon/Mars: "Water quality, microbial, airborne particulate, trace contaminant, and acoustic monitoring capable of informing response to off-nominal events caused by natural and induced environmental characteristics. Prevent undesirable outcomes for crew health and habitable assets. Internal and external habitation monitoring should be operable without Earth return of samples and with minimal consumables and crew time."
  • Mars: "In addition, increased reliability compared to the lunar performance target."

Child gaps

  • 0304-01: In-flight water quality monitors for quantification and identification
  • 0304-02*: In-flight identification and characterization of microbes in air, in water, and on surfaces in habitable volumes
  • 0304-03: Onboard particulate monitors to measure crew respiratory hazards, survive dormancy, and work in low pressures
  • 0304-04: Major constituent and trace contaminant gas monitoring for cabin air
  • 0304-05: Acoustic monitoring and control

0304-02 (starred) also appears under #1202. The asterisk marks "a child gap with multiple parents" (ADD Rev C, p. 199).

Traceability

  • Use cases and functions: UC-H-201 L; UC-H-202 L; UC-H-106 M -- FN-H-118 M; UC-H-107 M -- FN-H-119 M
  • Definition tasks: Mars: MD-10 Mars Forward Contamination Planetary Protection Risk Posture; MD-11 Mars Backward Contamination Planetary Protection Risk Posture

Segments and sub-architectures

Priority

Priority bin 2, overall prioritization rating 11 of 57. The rating is "the gap's location in the prioritized list of gaps", so 1 is the highest priority, and bins group gaps of similar priority, bin 1 highest. Criticality, urgency, breadth and depth set the order; cost is not considered (ADD Rev C, pp. 78, 199; method on the gaps index).

Moon Base relevance

Not established by the sources so far. The Users Guide does not name #0304 among its near-term Moon Base challenges (Technology and knowledge challenges).

Sources

Tech gaps spreadsheet, ESDMD #0304 · Planetary protection white paper, p. 4 · ADD Rev C, pp. 78, 199, 213