Approach for Defining an Acceptable Threshold Range for Smoke Detection in the HALO Environment

In the pursuit of human space exploration, the safety of the crew is paramount. Environmental Control and Life Support Systems are a unique aspect of human spaceflight that contribute to the myriad of problems requiring engineering solutions. Before being able to solve these problems, the first step is to properly define their boundaries. As with all human rated vehicles, the Artemis program, and by extension the Habitation And Logistics Outpost (HALO), will need to address fire detection. Though the approach to fire detection is complex, frequently smoke detection is a useful and necessary aspect of the solution. However, smoke detection in zero-G is not simple; It’s a multi-faceted problem dependent on numerous variables, ensuring that there is no “one size fits all” answer to the problem. In the development of HALO’s smoke detection solution, it was quickly identified that there is little guidance available for properly scoping the needs of a smoke detection device. This paper looks at existing documentation published from past experiments at the Glenn Research Center and, using the data from those papers, identifies a method for determining an acceptable smoke particulate concentration at which a smoke detector should alert. The approach is intended to identify a threshold at which smoke detectors can alert smoke presence in a defined cabin volume before crew health is jeopardized by the hazardous smoke by-products generated from smoke events, as defined by the NASA Spacecraft Maximum Allowable Concentration (SMAC) tables.