US Navy Submarine Sea Trial of a NASA Developed Multi- Gas Monitor

摘要

A Multi-Gas Monitor (MGM) was tested aboard a US Navy submarine for 76 days underway. NASA's goal is to study submarines as closed environment analogs to spacecraft and to share air monitoring development successes with the US Navy. MGM's core tunable diode laser spectroscopy technology was developed by Vista Photonics Inc, using Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants and expanded for various spacecraft monitoring applications using NASA program funding. The MGM measures oxygen, carbon dioxide, ammonia and water vapor in ambient air, displays concentrations with temperature and pressure, and stores 30 second moving averages of all data. The sea trial involved locating MGM in a well ventilated area, connecting it to ship power prior to departure, and allowing it to run automatically during the entire patrol. Data was stored within MGM for later retrieval. Crew intervention was limited to checking MGM's display periodically to verify operation. Several weeks after the submarine returned to port, the MGM was retrieved and the data recovered and analyzed. The paper describes the results of the successful sea trial, comparing MGM data with both Central Atmosphere Monitoring System Mark II (CAMS) data and typical International Space Station (ISS) atmosphere ranges measured by the ISS Major Constituents Analyzer (MCA).