The Trump Administration is proposing to formally start a cislunar space station program and begin assembly early in the next decade with launch of the first element. The Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) is the core module of the station, now named the “Lunar Orbital Platform – Gateway” (LOP-G).
As a part of commercial space industry initiatives for human exploration, the Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 NASA budget request submitted by the President to Congress in February also proposed an accelerated, dedicated commercial launch of the PPE in 2022.
The PPE was previously scheduled to launch as a secondary payload on Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2), which is currently planned to be the first crewed Orion spacecraft mission launch on NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. With the PPE no longer on the EM-2 manifest, NASA is evaluating changes to that mission, including aspirations of flying the Habitation module on a more ambitious flight for Orion’s first crew.
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