You can't confuse an accountant and an auditor with stories about a bright futuristic future promising magical prospects for science and progress. Give them dry debit and credit figures and clearly described action plans in case these figures do not converge. That is why, perhaps, the most interesting thing about the real situation inside the American space industry is told by the reports of the US Accounting Chamber. The new department document is dedicated to the program for the creation of a circumlunar visited station — and it is beautiful in its callously cold, bureaucratically cruel criticism of the project.
The primary problem with the Lunar Gateway, which was noticed by the auditors of the U.S. Chamber of Accounts (GAO) in a report published on July 31, is overweight. The first two manufactured modules of the station (PPE and HALO) have already exceeded the planned mass at launch by 1,312 kilograms. If nothing is done, the Space Launch System rocket simply does not have enough energy to throw them on the right trajectory.
The auditors proposed several solutions: either to revise the characteristics of the carrier based on real data from already completed launches (this happens, rockets turn out to be slightly more productive than originally calculated), or to adjust the launch windows to select more energetically advantageous trajectories, or to reduce the functionality of the modules.
In the latter case, you can do with little blood and reduce fuel reserves in the PPE, but then it will have to be delivered separately after the station is deployed. The situation is similar with HALO: the module contains a certain amount of supplies and equipment at launch, which theoretically can be unloaded in order to be transported later by cargo or manned missions. The alternative option will obviously be more expensive: you will have to redesign the components or modules entirely.
The GAO cannot advise which approach to choose — this is an audit agency, not an engineering one. The burden of the decision lies with the employees of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States (NASA) responsible for the project. Moreover, they need to hurry up and develop their own "mass management" plan as soon as possible.
The administrator of the space agency should send this document to all parties involved in the project before the critical design-informed synchronization review event scheduled for September. This is a comprehensive review of the current progress of the project, as a result of which the efforts of NASA and contractors are adjusted to achieve previously scheduled deadlines and budget goals. Either these deadlines and goals change, but sooner or later each such revision of previously approved figures will have to be reasonably defended before Congress.
Other problems noted by the Accounting Chamber include:
- The overall complexity of the project is that it requires the interaction of seven separate NASA programs, many contractors and several international partners;
- The dubious prospect of using the Lunar Gateway as an intermediate step towards the exploration of Mars — by the time human flights to the Red Planet begin in reality (2040s), the station will already be close to the end of its service life;
- Technical problems that have already been identified — for example, a number of electronic components have failed ground tests and need to be improved;
- Insufficient power to maintain its orientation: if a refueled Starship HLS is docked to the Lunar Gateway, its mass will increase 19 times, the PPE module is not designed for such loads and, most likely, will not be able to correctly manipulate the entire bundle;
- Missed deadlines and potential budget overruns — the first crew on the Lunar Gateway should be delivered by the Artemis IV mission in September 2028. This means that the station itself should enter lunar orbit in September 2027 in order to complete all checks before the astronauts arrive, and its most optimistic launch date is scheduled for December 2027 and will certainly shift to the right.
The authors of the report visualized the incredible complexity of the first mission to the Lunar Gateway in the form of a visual comic. The task of Artemis IV is to put the circumlunar station into operation and visit the surface of the Moon, for this the station itself and the lander are necessary. The following picture turns out: (1) first you need to launch two main LOP-G modules (PPE and HALO); (2) send a ship (Dragon XL) with fuel and provisions for a future expedition to the deployed station in a minimal configuration; (3) launch a Starship into low-Earth orbit in the storage variant (depot), refuel it with several tankers, launch the Starship HLS lander, refuel it from the storage and send it to the Lunar Gateway; (4-6) deliver the third LOP-G module (I-HAB) and a manned spacecraft to the Moon in one launch Orion with a crew, and in the process you need to perform a docking (as the Apollons did at the time), and for this mission you need a ready-made SLS of a more powerful version of Block 1B and a new ML-2 mobile transporter to take a fairly heavy rocket to the launch pad; (7-8) astronauts visiting the moon, collecting regolith samples and successfully completing the mission
Image source: GAO
The idea to deploy a temporarily habitable station in orbit around the Moon got underway inside NASA 12 years ago. At that time, the project was called Deep Space Habitat, and it received the first serious funding for preliminary research in 2015. A couple more years later, international partners were officially involved in the initiative.
By 2019, the station had finally acquired a certain look, and the whole project was an ideological reinforcement. Now it is called the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G, or Lunar Gateway), although sometimes older versions like Deep Space Gateway (DSG) are found in unofficial publications.
It is planned that LOP-G will become the center of international cooperation in space exploration after the end of the era of the International Space Station. With the help of this station, humanity will learn how to work in deep space, starting the exploration of the Moon, and then Mars. At least, this is how NASA representatives defended the project before the US Congress.
The current look of the Lunar Gateway is as follows: two American modules — energy PPE and habitable HALO, as well as three international ones — European multifunctional ESPRIT (communication, refueling, warehouse and residential area), European-Japanese residential I-HAB, as well as the gateway module, which is being created by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC, UAE Space Agency).
Private contractors are responsible for the logistics of cargo to the station, among which SpaceX with its modified Dragon XL spacecraft shows the greatest readiness. The people will be taken to LOP-G and returned to Earth by the Orion ship.
It is planned to use the result or results of the Human Landing System (HLS) program to descend to the lunar surface. So far, the most likely candidate for this role is a modified SpaceX Starship.
