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the international space station is an

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orbiting science laboratory and it's

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also an orbiting technology test site

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place where new concepts and hardware

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designed to improve our ability to

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travel in space can be tested in a

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weightless environment one successful

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example is the apparatus called the

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amine swingbed a system to filter and

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renew the air for the crew members to

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breathe inside their spacecraft recently

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my colleague pat ryan had a chance to

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talk with the amine swingbed principal

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investigator dr jeffrey sweterlick of

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the crew and thermal systems division

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here at nasa johnson space center and

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asked how this system works to clean the

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air on the station

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the way that the swing bag works is

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there is sorbent media contained in this

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basically a bed of rocks absorbent media

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that absorbs carbon dioxide and humidity

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and one bed is exposed to the cabin

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atmosphere and the other is exposed to

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vacuum the way that it's similar to the

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carbon dioxide removal assembly on

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station in a sense that you have two

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beds that go back and forth

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the difference is we don't have to do

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any heating with our system and it's a

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different tech different sorbent media

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that's being used

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we don't save our carbon dioxide this

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carbon dioxide that we absorb we went

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out to space

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so those are some of the differences

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that are between our system and the

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primary carbon dioxide removal system

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when you say you don't have to heat it i

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take it the other system does what is

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that to activate the that's how they

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regenerate their sorbent media our beds

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are designed so that the heat from

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adsorption transfers to the other bed

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doing the desorption so it's basically

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isothermal constant temperature process

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for us

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it reduces the energy demands

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which is also which is always a good

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thing on the spacecraft now i understand

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that this apparatus was originally

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designed to be used on the orion

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spacecraft

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so how does it come to be up in space on

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the international space station so it's

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an interesting story we were doing a lot

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of testing in our facilities here at jsc

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and people knew that we were doing some

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of this work

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and so

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management came to us and said we'd like

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to see how this would work in a real

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space flight environment

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and would you like an opportunity to try

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it out make sure exactly so we've done a

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lot of ground testing we even did some

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testing with some humans back in in the

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2008 time frame

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but then we started saying okay how are

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we going to get this on orbit because

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there are different demands

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for running this type of equipment on

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space station than you would in orion

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the orion missions they are shorter

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duration they're typically not going to

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be um

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they're going to be 20 days 30 day

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missions where stations up there for

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months and months and months at a time

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and so

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um the main thing is you want to make

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sure you save your resources as you go

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over and over

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rather than

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venting continuously which is what orion

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will be doing so we had to add

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additional hardware

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to see how to reduce our water losses

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and our air losses which are less of a

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concern for short mission but are very

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important to know about for long-term

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missions on stations so there's

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additional equipment that we added to

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the system

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to make it more compatible to the space

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station environment

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and it's been up there since uh may of

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2013. right we started operating in may

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of 2013. we had about a year and a half

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worth of troubleshooting to go on so

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that took some time to get that going

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but when we finally got it operational

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um we started operating it doing our

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science test we had about a thousand

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hours of planned test runs that we

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wanted to do

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and um we finished that up back in

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february time frame of last year

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how did it do it worked right it worked

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very nice it compared we had a couple of

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software things that we had to adjust as

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we were uh moving along but what we

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found was

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um

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it behaved very similar to how we tested

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on the ground which is

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produces a big boost of confidence yeah

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that the design is good and uh that also

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provides confidence to orion

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because their system is looking very

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similar to what we do in terms of the

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carbon dioxide removal function

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so it gives them a lot of confidence as

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well hey we've operated this in a real

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spacecraft environment that's good news

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for the orion program

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did you learn anything from the actual

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operation that you can apply back into

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the orion version there was a very

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unique technical issue that came up the

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swing bed the way that it works is

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there's basically two beds as i said

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earlier but there's a valve that rotates

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between bed a and bed b to direct the

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air flow

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and there was a feature with that valve

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that we found out during our testing

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that if you

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that could result in an over rotation

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and the problem with that is you could

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now have a direct path from cabin

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atmosphere to space vacuum which would

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be a bad thing yes so

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they when we learned about this

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uh situation

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that was information we were able to

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provide to the orion program and they've

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made some design changes because of that

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thing that we found out so

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the version we have on orbit won't

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suffer that issue this was a ground test

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that we tried out

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and um

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the new version is a lot more robust and

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so that

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that risk of having a direct path to

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space vacuum from the cabin isn't going

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to happen now now you mentioned you

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completed the testing in february of

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2014

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what is emming swingbed been doing up

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there uh since then what what's what's

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it going to keep doing so correct we did

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a lot about a thousand hours of test

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planning and since then we've done more

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than a thousand hours of actually

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providing contingency carbon dioxide

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removal systems when they take one of

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the primary systems down to do some

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maintenance they ask us to turn on to

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help with some of the co2 and removal

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functions going on so basically we are a

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backup when there's requests from the

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flight director or from some of the

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console operators say we need a little

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extra co2 removal

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they call us up

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and we operate it ourselves not in from

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the flight control room but from mission

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control

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and

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it's a very simple system to operate

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would be uh it'd be great to uh to see

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it running in in the future spacecraft

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too yes it will it i'm sure it will

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definitely be running in the future

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spacecraft we are planning we'll keep it

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up there as long as the space station

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program wants us to operate which could

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be

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another couple years who know i don't

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know exactly how long that will be but

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we haven't seen any changes in

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performance

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over the last two years of operations so

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that's also you know

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a very good thing for both the orion

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program and station program as well

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that's great jeff thanks very much for

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for bringing us up to date well thank

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you dr jeffrey sweterlich is the

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principal investigator of the amine