May 19, 2021 – NASA awarded a new contract to Skyhaven Systems to apply its vaporized hydrogen peroxide generator technology toward a sterilization system for deep space, unattended exploration missions. NASA’s Contamination Control and Planetary Protection requirements focus on both forward and backward contamination control for sterilizing spacecraft hardware and sample return materials. It has been shown by NASA that vaporized hydrogen peroxide (VHP) is an effective method for sterilizing samples and surfaces. However, for long-duration exploration missions, stored hydrogen peroxide solutions can lose their efficacy. To solve this problem, Skyhaven Systems is developing a vaporized hydrogen peroxide delivery and recovery system that can be used for NASA’s long-duration space missions. This approach uses an electrochemical reactor to produce a 750 ppm vaporized hydrogen peroxide stream that can sterilize a chamber over a 2 minute dwell period. This sterilizer system only operates with water and DC electrical power producing VHP, and where the VHP is subsequently collected and converted back to water minimizing mass expendables for long-duration space missions.