The Humidity Validation Payload and Distributed Humidity Control

The Humidity Validation Payload (HVP) has been developed by Orbital Technologies Corporation to validate key humidity and condensate management parameters in microgravity. The thorough understanding of dehumidification efficiency, component lifetimes, and capillary flow leads directly to an optimized, full-scale environmental control system for human-rated vehicles and structures. This paper provides an overview of the design showing the various subsystems and components. Results from initial ground operation are presented and evaluated including dehumidification efficiency and effectiveness. The on-orbit mission objectives are discussed along with the current mission profile and experimental plans for the future. The paper also discusses how this type of system can be applied to large scale environmental control systems using a distributed control system as well as the advantages of this type of approach.