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The collection and disposal of human wastes, such as urine and feces, in a spacecraft environment are performed in an aesthetic and reliable manner to prevent degradation of crew performance. The waste management system controls, transfers, and processes materials such as feces, emesis, food residues, used expendables, and other wastes. The requirements, collection, transport, and waste processing are described.
As the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) begins to look towards longer duration space flights, the importance of fresh foods and varied menu choices increases. Long duration space missions require development of both a Transit Food System and a Lunar or Planetary Food System. These two systems are intrinsically different since the first one will be utilized in the transit vehicle in microgravity conditions while the second will be used in conditions of partial gravity (hypogravity). The Transit Food System will consist of prepackaged food of extended shelf life. Microgravity imposes significant limitations on the ability of the crew to handle food and allows only for minimal processing. Salad crops will be available for the planetary mission. Supplementing the transit food system with salad crops is also being considered. These crops will include carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, radish, spinach, chard, cabbage, and onion. The crops will be incorporated in the menu along with the prepackaged food. The fresh tasting salad crops will provide variety, texture, and color in the menu. This variety should provide increased psychological benefit. Preliminary studies on spinach, tomatoes, and bok choy have been completed. Sensory and analytical tests, including color and moisture were conducted on the chamber grown crops and compared to store bought spinach, tomatoes, and bok choy. Preliminary studies of the appropriate serving sizes and number of servings per week have also been conducted.
The gcamfaostat R package is designed for the preparation, processing, and synthesis of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Statistics (FAOSTAT) agroeconomic data. The primary purpose is to facilitate FAOSTAT data use in global economic and multisector dynamic models while ensuring transparency, traceability, and reproducibility. Here, we provide an overview of the development of gcamfaostat (v1.0) and demonstrate its capabilities in generating and maintaining agroeconomic data required for the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM). Our initiative seeks to enhance the quality and accessibility of data for the global agroeconomic modeling community, with the aim of fostering more robust and harmonized outcomes in a collaborative, efficient, and open-source framework. One of the important features of the package is the possibility to construct the FAO Food Balance Sheets at the disaggregated commodity level (with over 500 commodities), which provides a comprehensive and detailed data input for a variety of analytical and modeling applications. The processed data and visualizations offered by gcamfaostat can also be valuable to a broader audience interested in gaining insights into the intricacies of global agriculture.
Food systems connect a diverse network of stakeholders around the world, with complex dynamics governing production, processing, transportation, trade and consumption of food products. Extreme conditions can disrupt multiple components of the food system, with systemic connections providing structure that can both buffer and exacerbate risks. Climate change is shifting current practices in agricultural production and the broader food system, encouraging shifts toward more diverse value chains capable of drawing from multiple food producing regions to reduce the chance that an entire value chain be subject to simultaneous impacts. The IPCC Working Group I report assessed that heat waves, fires, floods and severe storms are becoming more pronounced and widespread with each degree of global warming, increasing food system risk. Food system disruptions can also come from outside the climate system, including from viral outbreaks, geopolitical conflict and socioeconomic changes. This presentation will highlight how the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) develops modeling approaches that connect climate, biophysical and socioeconomic models in order to capture complex responses of the food system and potential interventions by diverse stakeholders in the public and private sectors. Models are applied on a range of scales that match decision contexts. These include households in specific agricultural production regions (e.g., within a country), national-level policymakers considering policies, sustainability and development priorities for a country’s agricultural sector, and global food market models that balance production and consumption around the world with competition for land, water, energy and sustainability priorities. Models are capable of capturing many important responses, but further development is needed to represent key systemic risks and the possibility for additional interventions beyond the farm gate. Improved food system models will provide important insights into our society’s ability to cope with climate change, as well as our ability to identify agricultural adaptation and mitigation opportunities to reduce overall risk.
All food in the Space Shuttle food system was precooked and processed so it required no refrigeration and was either ready-to-eat or could be prepared for consumption by simply adding water and/or heating. A gun-type water dispenser and a portable, suitcase-type heater were used to support this food system during the first four missions. On STS-5, new rehydratable packages were introduced along with a needle-injection water dispenser that measured the water as it was dispensed into the packages. A modular galley was developed to facilitate the meal preparation process aboard the Space Shuttle. The galley initially flew on STS-9. A personal hygiene station, a hot or cold water dispenser, a convection oven, and meal assembly areas were included in the galley.
Two methods for preparation of intermediate moisture foods (IMF) were investigated; water absorption and water desorption technique. Results indicate that shelf stability of IMF systems might be enhanced by preparing foods by rehumidifying dehydrated foods to optimum water activity rather than drying food to reduce the water activity.
As NASA is planning to send humans deeper into space than ever before, adequate crew health and performance will be critical for mission success. Within the NASA Human Research Program (HRP), the Space Human Factors and Habitability (SHFH) team is responsible for characterizing the risks associated with human capabilities and limitations with respect to long-duration spaceflight, and for providing mitigations (e.g., guidelines, technologies, and tools) to promote safe, reliable and productive missions. SHFH research includes three domains: Advanced Environmental Health (AEH), Advanced Food Technology (AFT), and Space Human Factors Engineering (SHFE). The AEH portfolio focuses on understanding the risk of microbial contamination of the spacecraft and on the development of standards for exposure to potential toxins such as chemicals, bacteria, fungus, and lunar/Martian dust. The two risks that the environmental health project focuses on are adverse health effects due to changes in host-microbe interactions, and risks associated with exposure to dust in planetary surface habitats. This portfolio also proposes countermeasures to these risks by making recommendations that relate to requirements for environmental quality, foods, and crew health on spacecraft and space missions. The AFT portfolio focuses on reducing the mass, volume, and waste of the entire integrated food system to be used in exploration missions, and investigating processing methods to extend the shelf life of food items up to five years, while assuring that exploration crews will have nutritious and palatable foods. The portfolio also delivers improvements in both the food itself and the technologies for storing and preparing it. SHFE sponsors research to establish human factors and habitability standards and guidelines in five risk areas, and provides improved design concepts for advanced crew interfaces and habitability systems. These risk areas include: Incompatible vehicle/habitat design, inadequate human-computer interaction, inadequate critical task design, inadequate human-automation/robotic interaction, and performance errors due to training deficiencies. To address the identified research gaps within each risk, SHFH's research plan includes studies in the laboratory, in analogs, and on International Space Station (ISS). In addition to establishing and maintaining the risk-based research portfolio, SHFH is also implementing a qualitative approach to determine how we at NASA evaluate human performance. Via interviews with experts, such as trainers, flight controllers, and flight surgeons, we are collecting the metrics by which they assess human performance, evidence of performance issues, and potential or actual consequences. The Human Performance Data Project will determine what human performance data have been collected in the past at NASA, and what data should be collected in the future in order to complete our knowledgebase and reduce risks related to human factors and habitability.
The nutritional requirements for Skylab crews are summarized as a data base for long duration spaceflight nutrient requirements. Statistically significant increases in energy consumption were detected after three months, along with CO2/O2 exhalation during exercise and thyroxine level increases. Linoleic acid amounting to 3-4 g/day was found to fulfill all fat requirements, and carbohydrate and protein (amino acid) necessities are discussed, noting that vigorous exercise programs avoid deconditioning which enhances nitrogen loss. Urinary calcium losses continued at a rate 100% above a baseline figure, a condition which ingestion of vitamin D2 did not correct. Projections are given that spaceflights lasting more than eight years will necessitate recycling of human waste for nutrient growth, which can be processed into highly efficient space food with a variety of tastes.
NREL and Element 16 collaborated on sulfur thermal energy storage modeling using NREL’s high performance computing (HPC) resources to assist its application in industrial processes. Industrial process heat (IPH) accounts for ~70% of US manufacturing energy use and is primarily produced by fossil fuel combustion. Approximately, 1500 TWht (~60% Terawatt hour thermal) of IPH demand is in the temperature range of 100-300°C. Industrial applications in this temperature range include drying, hydrothermal processing, thermal enhanced oil recovery, food and beverage, bioethanol production, etc. Cost-effective thermal energy storage (TES) that increases the utilization of waste and renewable heat (solar, geothermal, etc.) could provide significant energy savings and reliable heat sources, decrease emissions, and increase US manufacturing competitiveness through reductions in fuel consumption. This HPC4EI project facilitated Element 16’s development of low-cost and high-impact molten sulfur TES for dispatchable IPH. The development of a high-fidelity model validated by experimental data and HPC simulations enabled the successful resolution of the complex interplay between fluid dynamics and heat transfer processes during transient operation of sulfur TES, overcoming the numerical challenges posed by the non-linear temperature-dependent physical properties of sulfur. The project helped accelerate Element 16’s molten sulfur TES product design and support its broad applications.
Industrial process heating (IPH) accounts for approximately 70% of US manufacturing energy use and is primarily produced by fossil fuel combustion. Approximately 1500 TWht (approximately 60%) of IPH demand is in the temperature range of 100-300. Industrial applications in this temperature range include drying, hydrothermal processing, thermal enhanced oil recovery, food and beverage, bioethanol production, etc. Cost-effective thermal energy storage (TES) that increases the utilization of waste and renewable heat (solar, geothermal, etc.) could provide significant energy savings and reliable heat sources, decrease emissions, and increase US manufacturing competitiveness through reductions in fuel consumption. TES development has historically been dominated by technologies suitable for deployment with concentrating solar power (CSP). State-of-the-art thermal storage deployed commercially with power tower CSP plants uses a 60%/40% NaNO3/KNO3 molten salt and operates between temperatures of approximately 280 degrees Celsius and 570 degrees Celsius using a two-tank configuration. However, these nitrate salts are unsuitable for operation outside of this temperature range due to a high freezing point of approximately 220 degrees Celsius, and limits on high-temperature salt stability and corrosion resistance of containment alloys. Other materials being investigated for TES include those based on: (1) sensible energy storage (various molten salt compositions, inert solid particles, rocks or pebble beds, sulfur, water, concrete, graphite, etc.), (2) latent energy storage in materials that undergo solid-liquid phase change at relevant temperatures (organic materials for low-temperature applications, inorganic salts and/or metals for high-temperature applications), or (3) thermochemical energy storage (hydrides, hydroxides, carbonates, metal oxides, etc.). The application temperature and challenges pertaining to storage material and/or containment cost, energy density, long-term thermal and cyclic stability, and charge/discharge heat transfer effectiveness drive material selection for a given IPH or electricity generation application. Sulfur is a cheap commodity at $80/ton compared to $1100 - 1300/ton for conventional salts. When using a metric of storage cost per kWh, sulfur costs around 2-3 $/kWh. Previous sulfur TES development focused on high temperature (>600 degrees) concentrated solar power applications with sulfur encapsulated in pipes and flow of gaseous HTF (air) in the shell side. However, for lower-temperature IPH applications in the range of approximately 100-300 degrees Celsius Element 16 adopted a compact and scalable TES design with molten sulfur in the shell and HTF pipes submerged in the molten sulfur bath. The low-cost molten sulfur TES for dispatchable IPH has deployment potential for broad applications. The spatial and temporal evolution of the HTF and sulfur temperature is critical to the TES system performance, and thus detailed modeling can improve understanding of the performance and facilitate design improvements. Using high performance computing and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) a low-cost molten sulfur thermal energy storage (TES) system for industrial process heating (IPH) applications was developed. The unique challenges in CFD modeling of sulfur TES are the sharp property changes of sulfur relevant to the working temperatures. Above 159, liquid sulfur undergoes polymerization, and the viscosity of sulfur rapidly increases by several orders of magnitude between 159 degrees Celsius and 188 degrees Celsius, followed by a decrease in viscosity beyond 188 degrees Celsius due to thermal bound dissociation. In addition, various concentrations of H2S impurities can also modify sulfur viscosity. This numerical challenge is especially relevant to transient simulation of the sulfur TES charging and discharging processes as the extreme property variations limit the applicability of traditional heat transfer correlations. Transient CFD simulations including the temperature-dependent sulfur properties and geometric complexity of the TES design were used to predict the effect of natural convection during charging and discharging on the heat transfer process, sulfur temperature uniformity, charge/discharge rates, and performance of the storage devices. The CFD model was validated with experimental results for a full charge and discharge cycle. The work will show 3D and 2D simulation comparisons aimed to facilitate rapid design iterations and a machine learning based design optimization approach.
Chemical/biological process produces single-cell food from waste carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Used in reactor for producing single-cell food.
A look at what it might be like on a lunar farm in the year 2020 is provided from the point of view of the farmer. Of necessity, the farm would be a Controlled Ecological (or Environment) Life-Support System (CELSS) or a bioregenerative life-support system. Topics covered in the imaginary trip through the farm are the light, water, gasses, crops, the medium used for plantings, and the required engineering. The CELSS is designed with four functioning parts: (1) A plant-production facility with higher plants and algae; (2) food technology kitchens; (3) waste processing and recycling facilities; and (4) control systems. In many cases there is not yet enough information to be sure about matters discussed, but the exercise in imagination pinpoints a number of areas that still need considerable research to resolve the problems perceived.
A management information system (MIS), including a database management system (DBMS) and a decision support system (DSS), was developed to dynamically analyze the variable nutritional content of foods grown and prepared in an Advanced Life Support System (ALSS) such as required for long-duration space missions. The DBMS was designed around the known nutritional content of a list of candidate crops and their prepared foods. The DSS was designed to determine the composition of the daily crew diet based on crop and nutritional information stored in the DBMS. Each of the selected food items was assumed to be harvested from a yet-to-be designed ALSS biomass production subsystem and further prepared in accompanying food preparation subsystems. The developed DBMS allows for the analysis of the nutrient composition of a sample 20-day diet for future Advanced Life Support missions and is able to determine the required quantities of food needed to satisfy the crew's daily consumption. In addition, based on published crop growth rates, the DBMS was able to calculate the required size of the biomass production area needed to satisfy the daily food requirements for the crew. Results from this study can be used to help design future ALSS for which the integration of various subsystems (e.g., biomass production, food preparation and consumption, and waste processing) is paramount for the success of the mission.
As the incidence of obesity and associated negative health consequences is rising, it becomes crucial to monitor the dietary choices of individuals. Unfortunately, traditional methods to collect this information involve collecting food frequency questionnaires from individuals using paper. Electronic food trackers have been developed to collect food data, but they require participants to manually label and describe the content of their meals, and which may be difficult for researchers to interpret in a standardized fashion. Machine learning, however, provides an easy and efficient method for both participants and researchers to label food items with standardized descriptions. This project aims to create a prototype phone application that can identify and label photos of apples. This is done by making a machine learning model through Turicreate, a python module, which is then implemented into an iOS app through Xcode and Swift. The modules used in Swift include CoreML and AVFoundation. This machine learning application will be incorporated with a MealLogger phone app that is also under development. The MealLogger app will be used to keep track of participants' calorie intake and other personal details throughout the sleep study. The machine learning model will present several potential identities of the foods found in the photo, and the user will only need to select the correct option. This will be a user-friendly method for participants to easily log their food consumption without the hard work of manually inputting each and every description. Some limitations to this project include the wide variety of food, including those within different cultures. To deal with this, the model will include the most generic food categories, which the participant may select, and produce a drop-down menu of more specific dishes under that specified category, with the option of self-input. Additional questionnaires may be implemented according to the food type selected This will allow the process to be quick and easy, but also specific for the purpose of analysis. The release of the application will require a much longer process, but the machine learning prototype presents a first step toward an application that may change data analysis for researchers interested in collecting food intake from individuals living in the real world.
Improving estimates of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from food production, supply, consumption, and disposal is fundamental to identifying effective policy solutions. Through broader awareness of the food-climate nexus, climate mitigation as well as resilience can be enhanced. However, work is needed to address knowledge gaps, promote better policies and improve public understanding of issues related to the food system and climate change. The intention of this paper is not only to highlight the need for better scientific understanding of the processes through which GHGs are emitted—from production to processing, from supply chains and retail to food preparation and waste (figure 1)—but also to integrate science and policy in order to scale up impact on climate change action.
Publications of research sponsored by the NASA Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) program are listed. The CELSS program encompasses research and technology with the goal of developing an autonomous bioregenerative life support system, which is based upon the integration of biological and physical/chemical processes, that will produce nutritious and palatable food, potable and hygienic water, and a breathable atmosphere by recycling metabolic and other wastes. This research and technology development is being performed in the areas of biomass production/food processing, waste management, and systems management and control. The bibliography follows these divisions. Principal investigators whose research tasks resulted in publication are identified by an asterisk. Publications are identified by a record number corresponding with their entry in the Life Sciences Bibliographic Database, maintained at the George Washington University.
The Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) for producing oxygen, water, and food in space will require an interactive facility to process and return wastes as resources to the system. This paper examines the bioregenerative techologies for waste processing and resource recovery considered for a CELSS Resource Recovery system. The components of this system consist of a series of biological reactors to treat the liquid and solid material fractions, in which the aerobic and anaerobic reactors are combined in a block called the Combined Reactor Equipment (CORE) block. The CORE block accepts the human wastes, kitchen wastes, inedible refractory plant materials, grey waters from the CELLS system, and aquaculture solids and processes these materials in either aerobic or anaerobic reactors depending on the desired product and the rates required by the integrated system.
The Lunar-Mars Life Support Test Project (LMLSTP) was conducted from 1995 through 1997 at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration s (NASA) Johnson Space Center (JSC) to demonstrate increasingly longer duration operation of integrated, closed-loop life support systems that employed biological and physicochemical techniques for water recycling, waste processing, air revitalization, thermal control, and food production. An analog environment for long-duration human space travel, the conditions of isolation and confinement also enabled studies of human factors, medical sciences (both physiology and psychology) and crew training. Four tests were conducted, Phases I, II, IIa and III, with durations of 15, 30, 60 and 91 days, respectively. The first phase focused on biological air regeneration, using wheat to generate enough oxygen for one experimental subject. The systems demonstrated in the later phases were increasingly complex and interdependent, and provided life support for four crew members. The tests were conducted using two human-rated, atmospherically-closed test chambers, the Variable Pressure Growth Chamber (VPGC) and the Integrated Life Support Systems Test Facility (ILSSTF). Systems included test articles (the life support hardware under evaluation), human accommodations (living quarters, kitchen, exercise equipment, etc.) and facility systems (emergency matrix system, power, cooling, etc.). The test team was managed by a lead engineer and a test director, and included test article engineers responsible for specific systems, subsystems or test articles, test conductors, facility engineers, chamber operators and engineering technicians, medical and safety officers, and science experimenters. A crew selection committee, comprised of psychologists, engineers and managers involved in the test, evaluated male and female volunteers who applied to be test subjects. Selection was based on the skills mix anticipated for each particular test, and utilized information from psychological and medical testing, data on the knowledge, experience and skills of the applicants, and team building exercises. The design, development, buildup and operation of test hardware and documentation followed the established NASA processes and requirements for test buildup and operation.