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<\/p>\nWith the first two major elements of NASA\u2019s Lunar Gateway under contract and development, Northrop Grumman has outlined their plans for the overall Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module, which will serve as the primary habitation and nexus for the lunar station. <\/p>\n
HALO will now launch in a fully integrated configuration with Maxar\u2019s Power and Propulsion Element \u2014 a change that has brought about alterations to HALO. The duo will launch aboard a yet-to-be-officially confirmed rocket from the Florida spaceport in 2023.<\/p>\n
HALO\u2019s debut role at present will be to support the first planned human lunar landing Artemis mission. While NASA lists that milestone as officially 2024 for political purposes, the agency\u2019s senior managers under Kathy Leuders have declined to comment on the viability of the 2024 date, saying only that the landing will occur once all parts of the flight are ready to support and crew safety can be guaranteed as much as possible for such an endeavour.<\/p>\n
Politically motivated dates that do not conform to schedule reality for the various elements of NASA\u2019s moon plan have become a staple of the program, as NASA continued to publicly maintain \u2014 until a few months ago \u2014 that SLS would fly its first mission just before the Presidential election of 2020 even when their own public meetings all conclusively showed no ability for the rocket to meet that date for several months prior to the agency finally admitting it.<\/p>\n
That first SLS flight is now late-2021 under the current schedule.<\/p>\n
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The PPE and HALO after launching together toward lunar orbit. (Credit: NASA)<\/p>\n
However, regardless of when HALO will be needed to support the Artemis 3 lunar landing mission, the Gateway\u2019s nascent module will be slightly different than originally proposed due to its now co-manifested launch with the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE).<\/p>\n
Changes to HALO and connection to Cygnus:<\/b><\/p>\n
In a July 2020 interview with NASASpaceflight, Dave Hastman, Vice President of Human Exploration and Operations, Northrop Grumman, said, \u201cThis is analogous to the International Space Station development. You start with the engineers and say \u2018What do you think you need?\u2019 You come up with a list and then you realize what your schedule and budgets are.\u201d <\/p>\n
SpaceX (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n \u201cThen you sort those needs. And some of those needs aren\u2019t required for the first folks back on the Moon. And so you push those off to later when you have more time and you have more mass and you have more budget.\u201d<\/p>\n The cargo items now excluded from launching on HALO will have to be delivered separately on a future resupply mission, potentially on SpaceX\u2019s Dragon XL craft \u2014 which is to-date the only confirmed resupply vehicle for the Gateway.<\/p>\n A few significant changes to HALO itself stemming from the co-manifested launch include the elimination of the service module, which would have provided propulsion and power to HALO as it went out to lunar orbit and docked with the PPE. Those elements will now be controlled by the PPE using systems already planned for the element.<\/p>\n This reduces the overall cost for NASA by eliminating a launch and reducing the technical risk to the Gateway by removing the PPE\/HALO docking maneuver.<\/p>\n But even with those eliminations, Northrop Grumman still had to find other ways to reduce HALO\u2019s mass to meet the new dual-launch requirement.<\/p>\n