INSIDE NASA’ S
FUTURE MOON OUT POST
This ambitious new plan will put a space station in orbit around the Moon
WORDS ANDREW MAY
© Alamy / NASA
DID YOU KNOW?
There’s a campaign to name the Gateway after Apollo 11’s Michael Collins
RETURNING TO THE MOON
NASA’s plans for a more ambitious follow-up to Project Apollo go back a long way. In 1992 the agency produced a mission concept called Future Lunar Outpost which would have put a habitat on the Moon’s surface capable of supporting astronauts for a 45-day stay. However, NASA chose to focus on an Earth-orbiting space station instead: the ISS. The idea of a similar station in lunar orbit first arose around 2012 in the form of a relatively small deep-space habitat. But it was only with the advent of the Artemis program in 2019 that the full Lunar Gateway concept and its role in supporting a long-duration surface outpost emerged in its present form.
NASA has grand plans to build a space station in orbit around the Moon. Called the Lunar Gateway, construction could start as early as 2024 and is an essential component of NASA’s Artemis program to return astronauts to the Moon. Following the preliminary test flights, the plan is to embark on a series of long-duration missions, and that’s where Gateway enters the picture. It will serve as a kind of hotel for astronauts en route to the lunar surface, as well as providing accommodation and workspace for scientists who will spend up to three months at a time carrying out remote observations of the Moon and conducting other scientific studies.