Brief Description
The goal of the Eu:CROPIS mission (Euglena Combined Regenerative Organic food Production In Space) is to demonstrate the long term stability of a life support system. The system recycles biological waste products to produce drinking water, food and oxygen.
Project Description
For crewed space missions, it is crucial to supply space crews with sufficient food and air. Such missions normally lasts for months or even years. Therefore, efficient ways of recycling the limited on-board resources are required.
Eu:CROPIS focuses on developing and demonstrating a biological life support system with long-term stability. In particular, two systems are coupled together. In the first system, artificial urine is converted into nitrogen, which can be further used as nutrients for tomato plants. The second system is based on algae system, which is used to detoxify the whole system.
Fig.:Test of the Eu:CROPIS pressure tank
The project will demonstrate the feasibility of closed life support systems (CLSS) under different gravity conditions (e.g. Moon and Mars). On earth, the following applications are targeted:
zero-emission habitats in sensitive regions,
closed habitats in hostile environments, disaster areas, mines or submerged,
new methods of fertilization or fresh-water treatment.
DLR Simulation and Software Technology tasks
The DLR Simulation and Software Technology contributes to the development of the Command and Data Handling system (CDH) and the Attitude Control System (ACS) of the satellite bus.
This includes for the CDH system the implementation of parts of the telecommunication stack, on-board storage and retrieval service, thermal control system and hardware drivers for the on-board computer. Furthermore the design and implementation of the bootloader is carried out by this institute.
Furthermore the ACS software architecture is designed and implemented. It provides components for commanding and data management and is responsible for the communication with ten sun sensors, two magnetic field sensors, four rate gyros and two magnetic torquer systems. The data collected from all sensors is fed through filters and into the control algorithm which calculates the control response for the actuators. The software is based on the Tasking Framework developed at the institute, which allows a reactive, time controlled control flow for this crucial software component.
Project Partners
DLR, Institute of Space Systems
DLR, Institute of Aerospace Medicine - Department Gravitational Biology
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg - Division for Cell Biology
Project Runtime
2012 - 2018