NASA has issued a contract to Northrop Grumman Corporation, which involves the construction of the HALO module for the new Gateway lunar orbital station. It is considered as an element of the ambitious Artemis program.
The US Space Agency [...] has signed a contract with Northrop Grumman worth $ 935 million for the construction and integration of the first residential module for the Gateway station.
The agreement covers the assembly of HALO, as well as its integration with another Gateway module — Power and Propulsion Element (PPE), developed by Maxar.
Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway
Image source: wikimedia
The Habitat and Logistics Outpost (HALO) will be one of the first modules for Gateway. It will serve as a habitat for astronauts arriving at the station. The module will receive docking nodes for Orion spacecraft, cargo vehicles such as SpaceX's Dragon XL, and other spacecraft.
HALO is based on the Cygnus spacecraft from Northrop Grumman, which is used to deliver cargo to the ISS. "Using our Cygnus production line, Northrop Grumman can uniquely provide an affordable and reliable HALO module in the time necessary to support the NASA Artemis program," the corporation said.
Cygnus
Image source: wikipedia
Gateway is expected to play an important role in NASA's Artemis program after 2024. Although the project is headed by the US Space Agency, the Americans will create, maintain and use Gateway in cooperation with the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and a number of commercial structures.
Earlier, Russia was considered as one of the participants, but then the contradictions between NASA and the Roscosmos Corporation made themselves felt. The disagreements were of a technical nature — at least formally. Now, as far as we can judge, Russia has finally withdrawn from the project.
The station will serve as a starting point for exploring the South Pole of the Moon both with the help of robots and as part of manned missions. It is possible that in the future Gateway will be used for spacecraft flights to Mars.
Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway
Image source: NASA
The main goal of Artemis is to return astronauts to the surface of the moon. The first stage of the program, called Artemis 1, can be implemented this year. They want to carry out the first manned landing on the Moon in the middle of the decade (there are, however, no guarantees that these deadlines will not be shifted).
In the future, Russians and Chinese want to get their own lunar station: you can get acquainted with the prospects of a joint project in detail in our material.