Editorial: Presentations at the 2022 MELiSSA conference—current and future ways to closed life support systems

Kurzfassung

Long-duration crewed missions, as foreseen to the Moon and Mars, will require sustainable life support systems. Some functions, such as carbon cycling, will require biology. In 1989, ESA’s MELiSSA project was consequently initiated to generate knowledge on bioregenerative life support systems (BLSSs). At the core of this project was a concept where a loop of processes produce food, water, oxygen, and other resources while recycling waste. Over the following three decades, the MELiSSA community have used a progressive approach to refine, characterize, model, and control that loop. Beside laying the foundation for a system that could support long-term crewed missions, this undertaking has led to sustainable applications on Earth. At the 2022 edition of the MELiSSA Conference (held in Toulouse, France), experts discussed recent achievements and future directions in BLSSs with a focus on circular economy–for space and Earth. Participants were invited to report on their key findings in the present Research Topic. Here we give an overview of the published contributions.