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Active TRL 8 (started at 3, targeting 9)
The Mars Campaign Office (MCO) Life Support Systems project Environmental Monitoring (EM) systems task objectives are to develop and demonstrate onboard monitoring, detection, and analysis capabilities that will replace the state-of-the-art (SOA) need to frequently return air samples to Earth for ground-based laboratory analysis. This effort is addressing these challenges by adopting new analytical technologies and techniques that will allow for a modular EM system architecture that integrates multiple sensing modalities to address the monitoring needs of future deep-space exploration missions.
Exploration Aerosol Monitors (ExAM): Provides a flight demonstration of multiple aerosol monitors to measure and characterize particles in the crew respiratory hazard range. The suite of aerosol sensors will collect passive samples, as well as detect, measure, and distinguish aerosols of varied sizes and types.
The Aerosol Monitors suite of instruments are candidates for exploration missions and the ISS deployments will raise the technology readiness levels (TRL) and provide insight and lessons learned for the next generation of spacecraft dust monitors. OPERA has the unique ability to distinguish between different types of particles, which can assist smoke detection and prevent false alarms from dust in a coordinated monitoring architecture. The MARS samplers provide gravimetric verification for any dust monitoring activity, with archival samples that can be analyzed with a variety of techniques offline. Respirable lunar dust particles are a threat to human health and dust monitoring technologies provide the following benefits: (1) track exposure levels for human health protection and requirements verification, (2) Validate dust mitigation technologies used in lunar missions, (3) Alert to failures in HEPA filtration or other ECLSS equipment.
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This is a mature technology (TRL 8) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.
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