Introduction to In-Situ Resource Utilization

Kurzfassung

In the past five decades more than 550 humans ventured into space, most of them into the low-Earth orbit and a few of them even to the Moon using different vehicles. These astronauts performed various experiments, were part of experiments themselves, built infrastructures, and even repaired them in space. The future of human space exploration in the next decades is the establishment of sustainable planetary outposts and habitats on the Moon and Mars. This sustained human presence in space is challenging and requires a large number of technologies to maintain environment control, to provide water, oxygen, food, to utilize local resources and to keep astronauts healthy and psychologically fit. Currently physical/chemical life support systems and regular resupply missions represent the back-bone of each human spaceflight mission. In the future, bio-regenerative life support systems in conjunction with in-situ resources and advanced manufacturing methods will initially reduce and ultimately eliminate basic consumables from the logistics chain. Minimizing this need for resupply while ensuring human safety will allow astronauts to travel further and stay longer in space than ever before. This presentation provides an overview about current research and development activities in the area of in-situ research utilization. Various local resources and technologies and processes to extract those are explained to provide an overview about ISRU.