NASA delivers the official roadmap for its future

NASA finally delivered what it promised Congress last year, a "National Space Exploration Campaign Report" aimed at providing a roadmap for US space exploration in the 2030s. details are obvious, the report provides a clear picture of the trajectory of NASA in the approach of a new decade.

Among these priorities is the Moon Bridge, a potential space station around the moon, which we cover in detail. The document mentions the bridge 26 times in its 21 pages and describes it as "a lunar orbital platform to accommodate astronauts farther from Earth and forge US leadership and presence in the region between the Moon and Earth."

Vice President Pence, who heads the National Space Board, supported the bridge, as did NASA's Jim Bridenstine. NASA hopes to have it in orbit by 2026. "Given the current budgets, no other architecture has been presented, which allows us to do anything we want," Bridenstine told Ars Technica earlier this week. month. "And so I came to the conclusion that the gateway is the right approach."

Ideas about what would happen on the bridge are not lacking. The report indicates for example:

On the bridge, America and its partners will prepare to transit through deep space, to validate new technologies and new systems as we build the infrastructure to support the missions on the surface of the Moon and prepare the historic journey to Mars. NASA will also study the effects of the deep space environment of the bridge. We will learn how living organisms react to the radiation and microgravity environment beyond LEO [Low Earth Orbit]. The bridge will serve as an essential laboratory for expanding our knowledge in this area by organizing biological and biomedical studies in deep space for longer periods than was previously possible.

The gateway will also be evaluated as a platform for assembling payloads and systems, by robots or humans, for a human and scientific exploration exploiting its unique perspective in deep space. The gateway will serve as a reusable control module for lunar exploration and surface. It will evolve to serve as a starting point for the development of refueling depots, service platforms and a device for returning samples from the surface of the Moon and others. organizations to support science and commerce. At the maximum, the entrance gate will occupy 20% of the livable volume of the ISS.

The bridge would be built in space using materials carried by NASA's future space rocket, as well as commercial vehicles. The report is much less precise on the how and the arrival of the Gateway.

Page 12, for example, offers a timeline of "Critical Decisions and Milestones". In 2019, NASA plans to "determine the appropriate gateway requirements," including their accessibility. No estimate is given for a budget on the gateway or any of its components. Many decisions regarding Gateway are left behind, in an "after 2024" section, during which the evolution of the gateway will be evaluated. Neither is there any discussion with international partners, something crucial for the International Space Station.

There is a lot of criticism of the gateway, which was introduced for the first time as a common concept between Russian and American space programs in 2017. Many of these critics believe that creating an inhabited station is useless for what the gateway hope to become. it is better to focus on the colonization of the moon.

Although the report mentions trips to Mars, the details provided are even fewer. A Martian landing is repeatedly described in terms such as "daring in its complexity".

A calendar on page 19 examines the decisions to be made during robotic trips to Mars with soil samples, the development of standards for spacecraft and various R & D-type proposals. With regard to the actual journey, the NASA has stated that a "series of crewed Mars missions scheduled for 2030 culminating in a surface landing" will take place.

NASA projects can take a long time to achieve cohesion. Just ask someone who is waiting for the James Webb Space Telescope.

Source: SpaceNews