Case studies · Human spaceflight · closed-loop life support
Filter media for the Gaganyaan crew module
ISRO needed carbon dioxide removal media for the crew cabin of Gaganyaan, India’s first crewed spaceflight. The media had to be reformulated to the mission’s chemical and physical requirements rather than supplied from catalog.
Partner: ISRO — Indian Space Research Organisation
The problem
Gaganyaan is India’s first crewed spaceflight programme, demonstrating human flight to Low Earth Orbit.
A crewed cabin is a closed loop. Carbon dioxide is produced continuously by the crew and has nowhere to go, so it accumulates until something removes it. Unlike an industrial gas stream there is no bypass, no dilution and no possibility of changing the bed mid-duty.
ISRO was searching for filter media suitable for carbon dioxide removal in the crew cabin module.
What we did
The chemical and physical properties of the media had to be altered to meet the mission requirement — a catalog grade was not the answer.
Suracsh worked with ISRO to develop filter media against the specified parameters, drawing on the same in-house formulation and gas-testing capability used for custom impregnation work.
Outcome
Filter media was developed to the parameters ISRO specified, for the crew cabin module of the Gaganyaan programme.