Consumables (propellants, air, water, etc.) for manned and unmanned space missions of the future shall no longer be imported laboriously from Earth, but rather be produced from indigenous resources. The groundwork of the required systems and their components must be developed. Along those lines, hardware elements and processes (in particular the Sabatier process) were computer modeled and also hardware tested at the NASA Johnson Space Center from January 1999 to May 2001 under normal conditions as well as simulated Martian conditions. The applicability of the validated modeling tools and test procedures for other processes is outlined.
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Consumables (propellants, air, water, etc.) for manned and unmanned space missions of the future shall no longer be imported laboriously from Earth, but rather be produced from indigenous resources. The groundwork of the required systems and their components must be developed. Along those lines, hardware elements and processes (in particular the Sabatier process) were computer modeled and also hardware tested at the NASA Johnson Space Center from January 1999 to May 2001 under normal conditions...
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