NASA planning to launch an integrated Lunar Gateway in 2023

Enlarge / Artist's concept of initial configuration of the Lunar Gateway. (credit: NASA)

Last week NASA announced awards to three companies to develop Lunar Landers as part of the Artemis Program. But the space agency did not say much about its "other" major program near the Moon, a Lunar Gateway that will serve as a small space station that will be used to conduct scientific experiments. It will also function as a stop for potentially stashing fuel and a temporary habitat for humans.

NASA's primary mandate from the White House is to land humans on the Moon by 2024, and for now the space agency is working through the details of how that will happen. One aspect of the lunar lander awards worth noting is that NASA and its contractors will spend the next 10 months finalizing their plans, and from this process they will collectively determine the fastest, best path to the Moon by 2024.

That may involve staging the first human landing from the Gateway, in high lunar orbit, or it may not. But in an interview with Ars, both NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and the space agency's chief of human spaceflight, Doug Loverro, said the Gateway was an essential part of NASA's long-term plans to not only to return humans to the Moon but to do so in a sustainable manner.

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