Status of the Redesign of the Extravehicular Mobility Unit Airlock Cooling Loop Recovery Assembly

During EVA (Extravehicular Activity) 23 aboard the ISS (International Space Station) on 07/16/2013 an episode of water in the EMU (Extravehicular Mobility Unit) helmet occurred, necessitating a termination of the EVA (Extravehicular Activity) shortly after it began. The root cause of the failure was determined to be ground-processing short-comings of the ALCLR Ion Beds which led to various levels of contaminants being introduced into the Ion Beds before they left the ground. The Ion Beds were thereafter used to perform on-orbit routine scrubbing operations for the EMU cooling water loop which led to the failure. The root cause investigation identified several areas for improvement of the ALCLR Assembly which have since been initiated. Enhanced washing techniques for the ALCLR Ion Bed have been developed and implemented. On-orbit cooling water conductivity and pH analysis capability to allow the astronauts to monitor proper operation of the ALCLR Ion Bed during scrubbing operation have been investigated and are being incorporated. A simplified means to acquire on-orbit EMU cooling water samples has been designed as well. Finally, an inherently cleaner organic adsorbent to replace the current lignite-based activated carbon, and a non-separable replacement for the separable mixed ion exchange resin have been selected. These efforts are being undertaken to enhance the performance and reduce the risk associated with operations to ensure the long-term health of the EMU cooling water circuit. The intent of this paper is to provide an update of the effort to re-design the ALCLR (Airlock Cooling Loop Recovery) hardware. Last year, this effort was in the early stages of concept development and test which was reported in ICES Paper ICES-2016-221. Those phases are now complete and the final outcomes, as well as plans to build and field the hardware, are being reported on.