Plans for Inventory Management of Chemicals and Biologicals on the International Space Station

A large number of chemical and biological materials will be on the International Space Station (ISS) for use in experiments or as utility chemicals. In the event of accidental crew exposure to such materials, the ISS crew, flight controllers, flight surgeons, and toxicologists on the ground will need accurate information about the materials to which the crew was exposed. To meet this need, the HazMat chemical inventory database that is used on the Shuttle is being modified by Johnson Space Center’s (JSC’s) Portable On-board Computing and Tools Group to interface with an in-flight computerized Inventory Management System (IMS) that is being developed for ISS. HazMat will have toxicological information on chemicals and biologicals contained in hardware. IMS will use bar codes to track hardware from the time it is brought on board the ISS (from any supply vehicle) until it is removed from the ISS. The IMS will be updated by the crew as needed and will be synchronized daily with an Earth-based version of the IMS database at JSC called the Consolidated Maintenance, Inventory, and Logistics Planning (CMILP) database. The CMILP, in turn, receives its data from the Vehicle Master Database (VMDB), which is also at JSC.