NASA plans for crewed lunar orbital station
The early realistic concept of low cost cislunar habitat was developed by Boeing in 2015. It consisted of living and laboratory modules. The station could house up to 4 astronauts in a missions up to 6 months, and be serviced with crewed Orion spacecrafts. The main purpose of th station will be to test systems, developed for Mars crewed mission. Another use cases include servicing large telescope and another spacecrafts, deployed at Lagrange points and control of robotic vehicles on the Moon surface. which is critical for the future Mars missions.
Image: Boeing
In March 2015 NASA awarded contracts to study initial concepts for lunar orbital station. Lockheed Martin also got a NextSTEP contract to develop logistic schemes between station and Orion spacecrafts.
Image: Lockheed Martin
Now, with coming in 2018 first tests of superheavy SLS rocket, NASA is pressing ahead with plans for a cislunar space stations
Speaking at the American Astronautical Society’s Goddard Memorial Symposium here March 8, Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said that building of the station could start with the second and third SLS flight - EM-2 and EM-3. In initial plans, EM-2 should be first crewed Orion mission to fly around Moon in 2021, while EM-1 should do the same without crew, in the first SLS mission in 2018. However in February 2017 NASA began a study about possibility of putting a crew on EM-1. Positive results of this study open the way for starting to develop moon station in 2021.
The expertise, obtained with working cislunar station will pave the road to more ambitious enterprise - Mars Camp Base, Mars crewed orbital station.
In the roadmap, developed by Lockheed-Martin, if cislunar station will bedeployed in 2021, then Mars Base Camp could be launched in 2028.
Image: Lockheed-Martin
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