NASA's Grand Plan for a Lunar Gateway Is to Start Small
By Mike Wall a day ago Spaceflight
Don't expect a huge structure like the International Space Station.
In this illustration, NASA's Orion spacecraft (left) approaches the Gateway in lunar orbit.(Image: © NASA)
NASA's moon-orbiting space station will be lean and mean, especially at first.
The deep-space outpost, known as the Gateway, is a key element of NASA's Artemis program, which plans to put astronauts down near the moon's south pole by 2024. For example, lunar landers, both crewed and uncrewed, will depart from the Gateway, and astronauts will regroup there after wrapping up their surface sorties, NASA officials have said.
(These visitors will arrive at Gateway aboard NASA's Orion crew capsule, which will launch atop the agency's Space Launch System megarocket, or SLS. Both Orion and SLS remain under development; the duo is scheduled to fly together for the first time in June 2020, on an uncrewed test mission known as Artemis 1.)
The space agency had been targeting 2028 for the first post-Apollo crewed lunar landing. But in March, Vice President Mike Pence announced a newly aggressive timeline, pushing the moon shot up four years.
To make sure Gateway is ready to go in 2024, NASA will go first with a scaled-down, bare-bones version consisting solely of a Power and Propulsion Element (PPE), scheduled to launch in 2022, and a miniature "utilization module." This first incarnation of Gateway will be able to support two-person missions to the lunar surface, NASA officials have said.
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