ESA and UAB MELiSSA Pilot Plant to prepare for human planetary exploration

MELiSSA Pilot Plant inaugurated today by Minister for Science and Innovation, Director General of ESA and Rector of UAB

Cristina Garmendia, Minister for Science and Innovation, Jean-Jacques Dordain, Director General of ESA, and Ana Ripoll, Rector of UAB, today inaugurated the MELiSSA Pilot Plant at the UAB School of Engineering (ETSE). The laboratory is part of the European Space Agency (ESA) MELiSSA project and aims to be a unique facility in Europe for the demonstration of Closed Loop Life Support Systems, paving the way to human autonomy during long-duration space missions. MELiSSA is an artificial ecosystem for food, water and oxygen recovery from wastes, carbon dioxide and minerals. The MELiSSA Pilot Plant at UAB will integrate and demonstrate the associated technologies with a "crew" of 40 rats (equivalent in oxygen consumption to one person). This demonstration will be performed over a period of more than two years, which is considered a representative duration for human missions in space.

MELiSSA is the acronym for Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative, an innovative Project of the European Space Agency that was initiated as part of a research programme on life support Technologies, in order to facilitate long duration manned space missions.

These types of missions cannot be performed without regenerative life support systems like MELiSSA and other ESA life support technologies that will drastically reduce the amount of logistics needed to support the crew (without recycling, 30T for a 1000 day Mars mission). For this, a closed ecological system is proposed, with the generation of edible material from higher plants and microalgae, revitalization of atmosphere for respiration, recovery of water, and recycling of the wastes generated by the crew and plant growth.

The MELiSSA project is targeting ideally the recycling of 100% of all chemical elements, i.e. a fully self-sustainable ecosystem without any resupply. In terms of processes, control, stability, safety, robustness, this target represents a very high challenge.

The recycling challenges of MELiSSA are reinforced by the closed environment conditions and the presence of humans. As a consequence, intensive characterization, comprehensive integration, verification, validation and qualification activities are mandatory steps in the development and validation of MELiSSA.