ECLSS Activities for Preparation of Columbus Stage 1.E

A significant effort has been conducted in 2007 by TAS-I (Thales Alenia Space Italia) to adequately prepare the Engineering Support to Mission 1E (Columbus installation) and subsequent stages for ECLSS operational support.

This activity has been conducted both in the frame of the Engineering Support Team (EST) responsibilities and in the frame of the Columbus/Payloads integrated Stage analyses.

Among the various tasks, two has been identified as outstanding:

• The building of a Computional Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model of Columbus cabin for ventilation analyses.
• The building of a tool for the calculation of cabin air volume flow rate from air loop telemetry data (primarily fans dp and input current)

This paper describes in detail the above mentioned activities by pointing the attention on the critical aspects to be faced and the utilized techniques, taking also into account 1E mission lessons learned, and future developments.