Exohab1 development: Spin-in/out from space habitat to disaster management facility

The ExoHabl project aims at providing a bench technology for testing the technology/knowledge spin-in and spin-out for a laboratory/habitat module in extreme environment from entities that work for space and other extreme environments outside the space sector, such as disaster management. The laboratory/habitat should be set up quickly immediately after a disaster as a safe location from where to operate in autonomy from, for example, contaminated area. The technologies applied in ExoHabl aim to increase laboratory/habitat autonomy in terms of resources, communication, and safety. Water, energy, and communications are the main areas of focus from the technological side, while research on human factors design is also applied for the safety performance and comfort of the user. The habitat system is supposed to be as regenerative as possible to achieve maximum autonomy and also support the best interaction with the user. This technology will refer to the improvement of the ISS's space habitat system. Not only the technology will be tested and transferred from and to space, but also the knowledge and the research done in the areas of human factors, ergonomics, design, psychology, architecture testing, as well as cultural application. In particular, the first step of the Exohabl project is presented here, achieved with the testing of a mission simulation performed with the ExoLab module - appositely developed as a first functional mock-up - and the ExoHab habitat module, which has already been operational since 2009 at ESA ESTEC (European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands). This paper also presents the first results of the possibility for design development developed at Politecnico di Milano. The goal of this phase is to get multidisciplinary experts from the engineering, scientific and artistic fields involved in the development, testing, finalization, and optimization of the habitat (minimum space, time, and costs). In the next step, the operational habitat will be used to test procedures and technologies for living and working in extreme environments. The Exohabl project targets the capability to address large organizations, such as aid agencies that need to work in disaster environments, and is intended to be applied for testing technology spin-in and new know-how in the space sector.