Electric Propulsion Module for NASA's Gateway Station Tested at Full Power

Aerojet Rocketdyne and NASA recently demonstrated an Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) thruster at full power for the first time, achieving an important program milestone. Aerojet Rocketdyne-developed AEPS thrusters are slated to be used on the Power and Propulsion Element of NASA’s Gateway, the agency’s orbiting lunar outpost for robotic and human exploration operations in deep space.

The state-of-the-art AEPS Hall thruster operated at 12.5 kilowatts (kW) as part of its final conditioning sequence during testing at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The thruster demonstrated stable operation at power levels ranging from 4.2 kW to 12.5 kW. Full electric propulsion thruster string integration will take place early next year.

“Our AEPS thruster has demonstrated the high levels of power needed to operate the Power and Propulsion Element, and by extension, the entire Gateway,” said Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and President Eileen Drake. “With a successful full power test complete, Aerojet Rocketdyne is ready for the next phase of our advanced electric propulsion system in support of NASA’s Artemis program.”

The Gateway’s Power and Propulsion Element is a high-power solar electric propulsion spacecraft capable of producing 60 kW – which is three times more powerful than current capabilities. Two Aerojet Rocketdyne AEPS thruster strings will be employed on the spacecraft. Each string is comprised of a Xenon Hall thruster, a power processing unit that controls the electric power to the thruster, and a Xenon flow controller which controls the flow of Xenon to the thruster.

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Chinese Space Station Core Modules Built

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NASA Sole Sources Gateway Habitation Module to Northrop

NASA has quietly decided to give Northrop Grumman a contract to build a “minimal” habitation module for its lunar Gateway after concluding it was the only company that could meet NASA’s schedule.

The agency made the determination in a low-key “Justification for Other Than Full and Open Competition” document published late July 19 on a procurement website, linked a special notice issued May 30 that stated that NASA intended to use an existing Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships 2 (NextSTEP-2) program to procure the habitation module.

Under NextSTEP-2 Appendix A, NASA made awards in August 2016 to study concepts for habitation modules to six companies: Bigelow Aerospace, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, NanoRacks, Orbital ATK (now Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, or NGIS) and Sierra Nevada Corporation. For all but NanoRacks, that work involved the development of ground prototypes followed by testing, which took place earlier this year at either NASA centers or company facilities.

In the May 30 filing, NASA said that, in “the interest of schedule, economy and efficiency,” it would procure one or more habitation modules it requires for the Gateway as a follow-on to NextSTEP-2 Appendix A. It didn’t specify the process by which it would select the company or companies to build those modules, beyond the use of justifications for other than full and open competition. It did allow other companies to submit information about their capabilities by June 13, but according to the agency none did so.

In the July 19 justification, NASA said it concluded Northrop Grumman was the only company that could provide a “minimal habitation module” on the agency’s desired schedule. “NGIS was the only NextSTEP-2 contractor with a module design and the production and tooling resources capable of meeting the 2024 deadline,” the document stated.

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US Military Wants Orbital Platform

The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit wants options for an unmanned orbital outpost to support space experiments and operations — a logistics hub that might even grow, DIU’s solicitation suggests, to a larger manned space station.

DIU, which is charged with tapping non-traditional commercial companies for innovative technologies to meet Pentagon needs, issued a solicitation last week that gives interested vendors until July 9 to propose a “solution… for a self-contained and free flying orbital outpost.” The platform is to support “space assembly, microgravity experimentation, logistics and storage, manufacturing, training, test and evaluation, hosting payloads, and other functions.”

While the near-term requirements are obviously aimed at prototyping an autonomous, robotic mini-space station to house experimentation, the “future desired capabilities” listed in the solicitation are much farther reaching. They include the capability to dock with unmanned and manned spacecraft and, even more surprisingly, “human rating.”

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NASA Seeks Information for Commercial Resupply of new Gateway Station

In the latest step in sending astronauts to the lunar surface within five years, NASA issued a draft solicitation June 14 to industry seeking comments for a future opportunity for American companies to deliver cargo and other supplies to the Gateway in lunar orbit.

The first logistics service to the orbital outpost is expected to deliver science, cargo and other supplies in support of the agency’s new Artemis lunar exploration program, which includes sending the first woman and the next man to the surface of the Moon by 2024.

Last fall, NASA asked American companies for ideas on how to best supply the Gateway, which will be located in an orbit around the Moon about 250,000 miles from Earth. The Gateway will be a command and service module for missions to the lunar surface and eventually, exploration farther into the solar system. Following up on that initial request for information, today NASA published a draft solicitation for industry comments on its logistics approach, which are due July 10, 2019.

“We’re asking industry to provide a spacecraft to deliver cargo and other supplies to the Gateway. It will dock to the orbital outpost, but will be responsible for generating its own power,” said Marshall Smith, director, human lunar exploration programs at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We’re using the Moon as a proving ground for Mars to develop the technologies and systems we need for exploration farther into the solar system, so we look forward to seeing how industry responds to our upcoming solicitation, and potentially awarding multiple contracts for this lunar service.”

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China's Space Ambitions may be Facing Delays

China’s major space missions including a lunar sample return, Mars orbiter and rover and a modular space station could be facing delays due to an apparent issue affecting rockets required for launches.

The Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket is China’s most powerful launch vehicle and was designed to launch large spacecraft to geosynchronous orbits and planetary bodies. It was being prepared for a third flight in July, Yang Baohua, vice president of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), China’s main space contractor and developer of the Long March 5, announced in a Jan. 29 news conference in Beijing.

The mission would come two years after the failure of the second launch. However that schedule appears to have slipped as the launch vehicle has yet to be delivered to the launch site, with knock-on effects possible for China’s major space plans.

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Experiments Have Been Selected for Flight on the Chinese Space Station

Six experiments have been granted a place aboard to the future Chinese Space Station through a joint international cooperation initiative, with three more receiving conditional acceptance.

The results of the selection process were announced jointly Wednesday by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) on the sidelines of the 62nd session of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in Vienna.

The UNOOSA-CMSA initiative received 42 applications from organizations in 27 countries following an Announcement of Opportunity issued in May 2018. The winning institutions are based in a wide range of countries, namely Belgium, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, the Netherlands, Norway, Mexico, Poland, Peru, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Switzerland.

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India is Planning its own Space Station

India plans to have its own space station in the future and conduct separate missions to study the Sun and Venus, it said on Thursday, as the nation moves to bolster its status as a leader in space technologies and inspire the young minds to take an interest in scientific fields.

India’s space agency said today that it will begin working on its space station following its first manned mission to space, called Gaganyaan (which means “space vehicle” in Sanskrit), in 2022 — just in time to commemorate 75 years of the country’s independence from Britain. The government has sanctioned Rs 10,000 crores ($1.5 billion) for the Gaganyaan mission, it was unveiled today.

“We have to sustain the Gaganyaan program after the launch of the human space mission. In this context, India is planning to have its own space station,” said Dr. Kailasavadivoo Sivan, chairman of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). ISRO is India’s equivalent to NASA.

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NASA Gives an Update on its Gateway Station Habitat Module Prototyping

Even as NASA’s plans for the Lunar Gateway evolve, the space agency is continuing work on developing a habitat for the crew that will use the facility as an orbiting base for the study of the Moon.

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NASA's Gateway Station Progress

In FY19, NASA received $450M for Gateway Station.

The FY20 budget proposal gives the Gateway Station $840M.

The government shutdown delayed the Power and Propulsion Module for Gateway Station from September 2022 to December 2022 (at least).

Canada has become the first international partner to sign onto NASA's Gateway Station.

Lockheed completed a prototype habitat module.

Soyuz Rocket Explodes, Astronaut and Cosmonaut Survive

Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and American astronaut Nick Hague had what was likely one of the wildest rides in the history of mankind when their Soyuz-FG rocket malfunctioned catastrophically just minutes after blasting off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Reports state that the rocket's second stage booster failed as the two arched their way towards low-earth orbit insertion. Their final destination was the International Space Station.

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China may be Having Problems With the Launcher for its Next Gen Space Station

China’s plan to launch and construct a space station could be hit by a test flight delay of the launcher designed to send the modules into orbit.

An online report by People’s Liberation Army Daily, a military newspaper, reports Lin Xiqiang, deputy director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO), as saying at a press conference in Beijing on Wednesday that the Long March 5B will not make its planned test launch in the first half of 2019.

“Due to the failure of the launch of the Long March 5 remote launch vehicle, the first flight of the Long March 5B carrier rocket will be postponed. The specific implementation time needs to be clarified after coordination with relevant departments,” Xiqiang said.

The CMSEO manages China’s human spaceflight efforts and had planned a test launch of the Long March 5B before launching the 20-metric-ton Chinese Space Station core module, Tianhe, into low Earth orbit sometime in 2020.

The Long March 5, a launcher for missions to Earth orbit and beyond, suffered a failure in its second flight in July 2017, prompting an investigation and subsequent redesign of first stage engines, which were test-fired successfully early this year.

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Russia Claims NASA Wants to Extend ISS Life to 2030

The United States has initiated prolongation of the International Space Station’s service life till 2028-2030 and corresponding work is already in progress, Russian cosmonaut, deputy director of the Institute of Biomedical Problems under the Russian Academy of Sciences, Oleg Kotov, told TASS in an interview.

"No, they [NASA] do not wish to dump it [the ISS] and they have never wished to do that. They have already initiated prolongation of the station’s operation till 2028-2030 and this work is already in progress. There are two tasks on the agenda - to persuade the government to provide funds for financing the operation of the ISS and to carry out technical scrutiny into whether it is safe to prolong the station’s life cycle," Kotov said.

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It is hard to believe the above when NASA will have such tremendous budget pressures in the 2020s with the lunar gateway, lunar landings and building the mars ship.

Then again, it looks like Congress, both the House and Senate, want to extend the ISS.

Speaking of the Gateway Station, Russia also stated they may abandon the project because NASA is not treating them as a peer rather than a secondary partner.  Given Russia's lack of recent experience past LEO for any mission and no experience for human spaceflight, Russia's inability to finish its portion of the ISS, and the current geopolitical climate, I'm surprised Russia thinks it will participate at all: NASA hasn't listed the Russians as participating in the station construction at least as of the last update.

Russia is claiming they may build their own gateway station, but...yeah.  Just like they will build their own LEO station in 2020.  um.  yeah.  we'll see.

Now they are backtracking their claim they will not participate in the Gateway Station.  It sounds like they don't want this to be an American project with international participation as junior partners, but rather to have it be an international project with American participation.

The Orion EM-3 Mission Will bring Two Gateway Modules to Lunar Space

NASA says astronauts will haul two pieces of a small space station to lunar orbit in 2024, during the second crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft.

Plans for the station, which is now referred to as the Gateway, have been shaping up since 2017. The Gateway, Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule represent the core of NASA's plans to send humans back to the Moon and on to Mars. The Gateway is designed to host astronauts for short-term stays, serve as a waypoint for crewed surface missions and receive samples robotically collected from both the Moon and Mars.

The first piece of the Gateway is a power and propulsion module, scheduled to launch on a commercial rocket in 2022. The first crewed Orion mission, a lap around the Moon that will not stop in orbit, is scheduled a year later, in 2023. Then, in 2024, another Orion crew will fly to lunar orbit and visit the power and propulsion module, with two more pieces of the Gateway in tow.

"NASA plans to deliver two modules on the third integrated flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft, targeted for 2024," said Kathyrn Hambleton, a NASA public affairs officer, in an email.

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NASA dropped the RFP for the gateway station 's power and propulsion module already, too.

NASA updated the assembly schedule for the Gateway: note!  Nowhere does it say anything about Russian participation.  The acquisition strategy decision for the airlock Russia was claiming it would build has been delayed until 2020.  I have expect it to be delayed another year, tbh.

Japan wants to participate in the Gateway.

NASA conducted the final parachute test for the Orion capsule.

The Chinese are not Impressed with the LOPG/Deep Space Gateway

Overall, Pei does not appear to be a fan of NASA's plan to build a deep space gateway, formally known as the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, at a near-rectilinear halo orbit. Whereas NASA will focus its activities on this gateway away from the Moon, Pei said China will focus on a "lunar scientific research station."

Another slide from Pei offered some thoughts on the gateway concept, which NASA intends to build out during the 2020s, delaying a human landing on the Moon until the end of the decade at the earliest. Pei does not appear to be certain about the scientific objectives of such a station, and the deputy director concludes that, from a cost-benefit standpoint, the gateway would have "lost cost-effectiveness."

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NASA Might Build Multiple Propulsion Modules for the LOPG/Deep Space Gateway

s NASA prepares to request proposals from industry to develop the first element of its proposed cislunar gateway, the agency says it may be open to buying more than one of the modules.

NASA’s Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, previously known as the Deep Space Gateway, will incorporate several modules, starting with one called the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE). That element will provide power for the gateway and also use electric propulsion to maneuver the complex in cislunar space.

During a March 27 meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations committee, Michele Gates, director of the Power and Propulsion Element at NASA Headquarters, said the agency was ready to move ahead with procurement of the module after five industry studies wrapped up earlier this month.

The four-month studies, led by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Orbital ATK, Sierra Nevada Corporation and Space Systems Loral, examined nearly two dozen topics, ranging from the overall design approach for the PPE to specific engineering details.

Some of those companies were involved in previous studies for NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission, which also intended to use electric propulsion on its robotic spacecraft to retrieve a boulder from a near Earth asteroid. “Our strategy is to leverage all of the work that’s been done, including on the Asteroid Redirect Mission,” said Gates, who previously managed those efforts.

For the PPE, NASA plans to develop the module in a public private partnership with industry. Once the module is launched and its performance demonstrated in space, NASA would have the option to then buy the module for use in the gateway.

Gates said that NASA expects to issue a draft solicitation for the PPE in April, with an industry day to take place in late April or early May. A final solicitation will then follow, with proposals due to NASA in late July.

NASA envisions a 2022 launch of the PPE on a commercial launch vehicle. There is “substantial” funding planned to support its development, she said, including $51.5 million for the current fiscal year and $542.1 million projected through fiscal year 2022.

However, NASA is not restricted to buying a single PPE. The proposal synopsis, released in February, states that NASA is planning “potentially one or more contract awards” for PPE development.

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NASA Evaluating Placing Deep Space Gateway Propulsion Module on EM-2 SLS Launch

While NASA engages spacecraft industry help in studying concepts for design, development, test, and evaluation of the Power Propulsion Element (PPE), it is also studying where the anchor component of the proposed Deep Space Gateway (DSG) would orbit the Moon and how it would get there when launched as a part of Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2).

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Bigelow, United Launch Alliance Plan Lunar Orbiting Space Station in 2022

Bigelow Aerospace and United Launch Alliance said Oct. 17 that they are cooperating on the development of a habitat orbiting the moon that they hope to build in a public-private partnership with NASA.

The companies said they are working together on a concept for a “lunar depot” using an expandable module provided by Bigelow and launched by a next-generation ULA rocket that could support both NASA and commercial uses as soon as 2022.

Under the concept, a ULA Vulcan 562 rocket would launch the Bigelow B330 module into low Earth orbit. The module would remain in Earth orbit for up to a year to undergo tests and be visited by crews.

ULA would then launch two more Vulcan rockets, each placing an Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage (ACES) upper stage in orbit. One of the ACES would refuel the other, which would then dock with the B330 and send the module into a low lunar orbit.

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Jeff Bezos is Aiming for O'Neill Cylinder Colonies

SpaceX’s Elon Musk wants to settle humans on Mars. Others talk about a Moon Village. But Seattle billionaire Jeff Bezos has a different kind of off-Earth home in mind when he talks about having millions of people living and working in space.

His long-range vision focuses on a decades-old concept for huge artificial habitats that are best known today as O’Neill cylinders.

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NASA Issued RFI for Using Docking Port on International Space Station

As two companies move forward with plans to develop commercial modules for use on the International Space Station as precursors to independent space stations, NASA is soliciting concepts for use of a space station docking port.

NASA issued a request for information (RFI) July 1 about how “limited availability, unique International Space Station capabilities” could be used to support economic development in low Earth orbit. “This RFI is being used to determine private market interest in using unique ISS capabilities that have limited availability in order to advance economic development in LEO,” the document states.

That request specifically mentions future use of the aft docking port on the Node 3, or Tranquility, module. That port is currently occupied by the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), installed on the station earlier this year for a two-year test. It would thus be available for use by other modules as soon as 2018, when the BEAM is removed from the station.

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