NASA is set to begin construction on a Gateway to the Moon, a space
station that will connect the Earth and our Moon in a profound new way and
enable the next generation of deep space science and research. The Gateway station is
a multifaceted construction project involving NASA, the European Union, Japan, Canada,
and a host of private aerospace contractors. Like the ISS before it, the
Gateway will serve as an international outpost, except this station will be one thousand
times further away from the Earth and will serve as a jumping off point for
missions to the surface of the Moon. Let's talk about how the Gateway will
be constructed and what it will look like when fully operational. This is the
space Race. The initial function of the Gateway will be to serve as a
waypoint on crude missions to the lunar surface. The crew will dock their Orion
capsule to the Gateway and transfer over to prepare for the journey to the surface.
Then two members of the crew will transfer over to the human landing system
for descent to the Moon, while two crew members remain in the station.
Following the lunar excursion, the landing party returns to the Gateway. In the
HLS, they rejoin the rest of their crew and then reboard the Orion for
the trip back home. Unfortunately, the gateway will not be in operation for
the first moon landing on Artemis three, but the gateway is scheduled to be
prepared by the crew of Artemis four and will be functional as of Artemis five.
As the station grows and evolves over time, it will start to function
more as a long term research outpost, and eventually the Gateway will have its
own permanent, long term crew. The first phase of the Lunar Gateway is
scheduled to be launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket as early as November twenty
twenty four, but more realistically it's going to be sometime in twenty twenty five.
This launch will send the two primary modules of the station together under one
faring the Halo Habitat module and the PPE Power and Propulsion module. This is
going to take a while to actually arrive at the Moon. Sending two space
station modules to the Moon at the same time is pushing even the Falcon Heavy
to its absolute limits, so they are not going on a direct high speed
path. Instead, the payload will take a long slow arc that will last
between nine and ten months before arriving in the desired lunar orbit. The HALO,
or Habitat and Logistics Outpost, is being manufactured by Northrop Grumman in the
United States and will serve as the core module of the station. It's essentially
a repurposing of the company's Singus spacecraft, which is the primary supply ship of
the ISS. Halo is where the Orion capsule and HLS vehicles will dock and
where the crew will live and work for the duration of their mission. According
to Northrop Grumman, the Halo module has space for the crew to sleep,
an exercise, prepare food, and perform scientific experiments, though the relatively small
dimensions of the gateway modules will make for a less than luxurious experience. At
just three meters in diameter, the Halo is around thirty percent more narrow than
the ISS core modules, and due to a combination of weight restrictions and design
constraints, the Halo module will have no windows at all, which is probably
the most disappointing factor for future crew members. On April nineteenth, Northrop Grumman
posted a photo on Twitter of their new thermal vacuum chamber, which is under
construction at their facility in Gilbert, Arizona. The company wrote that this giant
enclosure will be used to test the HALO module prior to the launch on the
Falcon Heavy. Halo will be integrated with the PPE, or Power and Propulsion
element. This is another United States contribution to Gateway, coming from the satellite
company Maxar Technologies. This module is purely about function. Once deployed in orbit
around the Moon, the PPE will extend two large solar panel rays that will
roll out like yoga mats, each about the size of a football field end
zone. The module will utilize this solar energy to generate sixty kilowatts of electric
power for Gateway. In addition, the module is fitted with electric ion thrusters
that will use energy from the Sun to accelerate low density zenon gas. This
is how Gateway will maintain its orbital path. On March thirty first, the
NASA Gateway Twitter account posted a photo of the central cylinder of the PPE module,
writing that PPE will make Gateway the most powerful solar electric spacecraft ever flown,
following that not much happens with Gateway until Artemis four, but this will
be a big mission for the station. This is tentatively scheduled for twenty twenty
eight, and it will be the first crew to make use of the station.
And not only that, but Artemis four will be bringing along the third
module for Gateway. The European Space Agency's International Habitation Module or IHAB I will
be hitching a ride along with the Orion in the new Exploration upper stage of
the SLS Block one B configuration. The Orion will doc IHAB to the Halo
module on the opposite end from the PPE. With these three together, Gateway
should be fully functional. I HAB brings environmental control and life support systems.
It will have a galley, hygiene and waste management, refrigerators, workstations,
and control consoles. Still no windows though, coming to Gateway with Artemis five
in twenty twenty nine. Also on the SLS Block one B Exploration Upper Stage
will be the European System providing refueling, infrastructure and telecommunications or SPREE. In
addition to everything that it says in the name, the new module will finally
deliver a cupola style observatory window to the Gateway station so people living in orbit
around the Moon can actually see the damn Moon. But that's not all.
Artemis five is also slated to deliver the Canada ARM three to the Gateway.
This is going to provide them with an external robotic system. We still don't
have a specific use case for this thing yet, but it's just cool that
the Gateway will have its own robotic arm. Then with Artemis six in twenty
thirty, there will be an airlock module delivered to Gateway. We're still not
sure who's making that or what it's going to look like, but this will
allow astronauts to go outside the Gateway and do spacewalks around the Moon, which
is so fragg and cool. At this point, the Canada ARM will become
a lot more useful as well. Throughout this whole period, NASA will be
running supply missions to the Gateway using a yet to be revealed SpaceX Dragon XL,
which is supposed to be an upgraded deep space version of the existing Cargo
Dragon spacecraft. These will launch on the Falcon Heavy and reach the Gateway to
deliver supplies and remove trash. One of the really unique aspects of the Gateway
is that it will be taking advantage of a new orbital path around the Moon
This is called the near rectilinear halo orbit. It sounds very complicated, and
it is, but in simple terms, this is a very long oval shaped
orbit that takes one week to go around the Moon. At the peragy,
or lowest point of the orbit, the Gateway will come in close around the
north pole of the Moon at nine hundred and thirty miles above the surface,
and then fly way out into space for the aperge, or highest point of
the orbit, at forty three thou five hundred miles. This particular orbit uses
a balancing point between the gravity of the Earth and the Moon, and it
makes for an extremely stable path that won't require much energy from the Ppe thruster
section to maintain over the long term. If NASA had chosen a lower orbit
that circled tight around the Moon, then it would have required significantly more energy
and fuel to resist the Moon's gravity and keep the space station in place.
If they had gone for a high and distant orbit, then it would have
been even less energy intensive, but would make access to the Moon's surface very
difficult. So the near rectilinear halo orbit is kind of a best of both
world scenario, and when the Gateway does pass close to the Moon, it
comes in on an approach angle that would allow the hls to reach just about
any area of the surface that they want to explore. The orbital path also
maintains a constant line of sight with the Earth, meaning there will be no
communications blackout periods. NASA is currently testing out the near rectilinear halo orbit for
the first time using their Capstone satellite. This is a microwave sized box that
was launched by the rocket Lab Electron rocket in twenty twenty two. The job
for Capstone is essentially to validate that everything we just said is actually true.
Theories are only theories until you put them to the test, So Capstone will
be testing the power and propulsion system requirements for maintaining its orbital path, along
with verifying new navigation and communication systems that will later be utilized by Gateway and
future operations around the Moon. As it stands, in NASA's most recent twenty
twenty four budget request, they specific details going out as far as Artemis seven
in twenty thirty one, and they only list Gateway operations with an arrow pointing
forward into the future, so it's hard to say exactly right now what that
future might hold, but one of the key long term goals that we know
NASA is planning for the Gateway is to use this as a jumping off point
for an expanded presence on Mars. By using Gateway as a staging point in
between the Earth and Mars, it gives them the capability to send much larger
and more complex payloads to the Red planet. Launching anything straight from Earth to
Mars is incredibly difficult. Just opening up the possibility of refueling a spacecraft in
lunar orbit will make that journey so much easier, and Gateway can be used
in a ton of creative ways to essentially give us a foothold into the wider
Solar System. It might not be pretty or particularly comfortable, but the Gateway
Station will likely be one of the most important things that humanity builds this decade.