Development and testing of an efficient LED intracanopy lighting design for minimizing Equivalent System Mass in an advanced life-support system.

NASA has defined a metric to determine the necessary launch capacity for an advanced life-support system (ALS), designed to support humans for an extended duration beyond low earth orbit. This metric allows the comparison of techniques and technologies over time and between mission scenarios, yielding the optimum physical-chemical and bioregenerative array for human life support. The metric in use is Equivalent System Mass (ESM), which equates power, volume, cooling and crew time into a mass-equivalency unit (Kg) as shown by Equation 1 (Levri, 2003). Equation 1 ESM = M + (V•Veq) + (P•Peq) + (C•Ceq) + (CT•D•CTeq)