Most important problem to create CELSS system to be used in space, such as Lunar Base or Manned Mars Spacecraft seems how to design and operate various material recycling subsystems in order to avoid material accumulation in the closed space constituting Lunar Base and Mars Spacecraft themselves.
Living creatures such as human beings and plants in the closed space become main parts of CELSS system, and metabolic functions of these creatures are to be fully supported by various material recycling subsystems.
Through recent studies about Lunar Base, one example of preferable CELSS configuration to be appled in Habitat Module and Plant Cultivation Module have been elucidated.
Material recycling subsystems to be installed in Plant Cultivation Module are to be composed of various systems such as dehumidifier, oxygen separation system, catalytic wet oxidation system, nitrogen fixation system including water electrolysis, ammonia and nitrate synthetic reactors and nutrient adjusting system including tanks and so on.
The required performances of such various material recycling subsystems are to be determined using precise metabolic data of various species of plants to be selected and experimented and using the transplanting sequence plan.
The plant metabolic data except for wheat and potato has not fully accumulated in the pesent stage, Therefore much of plant cultivation experiments are required to obtain such data for determining the performances of each material recycling subsystems introduced in Plant Cultivation Module.
In this papper, detailed explanations about preferable system configuration to be applied in Plant Cultivation Module and about the experimental chamber recently installed in National Aerospace Laboratory for obtaining basic metabolic data of plants are given.
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