Ultra Long-Lived Autonomous Air Quality Sensing, Year 1

Long-lived environmental sensors directly enable untended vehicle autonomy as well as crew health monitoring and response to airborne contaminants. Bluetooth Personal CO2 Monitors (PCO2Ms) flying on ISS provide an initial capability, but need for frequent recharge (~4 days) allows limited scaling and no long-duration autonomy. We finalize the design of an ultra-low power wireless sensing platform (JSC) and integrate it with an ultra-low power CO2 sensor (ARC) to give a flight-certifiable, wearable or peel/stick platform that can operate for years at a time without battery recharge/replacement. The sensor will be forward-compatible with existing ISS RFID inventory management infrastructure for follow-on flight demos, and costs will be augmented by AES funding to integrate SBIR-produced location tracking sensors. This will provide a capability un-matched by any SoA wireless sensor package and can easily extend to other sensing modalities (ammonia, radiation, etc.), addressing the JSC technology priority area of Automation and ECLSS. Dr. Steve Horan (STMD Avionics PT) agrees that this infusion path is reasonable and this work is in alignment with the PT for Avionics quantifiable capabilities. Long-lived environmental sensors directly enable untended vehicle autonomy as well as crew health monitoring and response to airborne contaminants. Bluetooth Personal CO2 Monitors (PCO2Ms) flying on ISS provide an initial capability, but need for frequent recharge (~4 days) allows limited scaling and no long-duration autonomy. We advance the design of an ultra-low power wireless sensing platform (JSC) and integrate it with a low power CO2 sensor (ARC custom or COTS) to give a flight-certifiable, wearable or peel/stick platform that can operate for years at a time without battery recharge/replacement. The sensor will be forward-compatible with existing ISS RFID inventory management infrastructure for follow-on flight demos, and costs will be augmented by Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) funding to integrate Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)-produced location tracking sensors. This will provide a capability un-matched by any state-of-the-art (SoA) wireless sensor package and can easily extend to other sensing modalities (ammonia, radiation, etc.), addressing the JSC technology priority area of Automation and Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS). More »