SAN FRANCISCO, iNews.id – NASA and Northrop Grumman have finalized the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) development contract for the gateway. This gateway will become an important road station and outpost in lunar orbit as part of NASA’s Artemis program.
The Artemis gateway will effectively be the lunar equivalent of the International Space Station (ISS), mixed in with the transit terminal. On the one hand, the gateway will be a location where zero gravity experiments can be carried out.
To fit the role, the gateway becomes a complex structure on its own. There would be pressurized shelters, for example, where lunar missions could be run along with docking ports for spacecraft like NASA’s Orion, different Moon landers, and logistics supply ships.
The Gateway key as a whole is HELLO. “The HALO module will serve as the backbone for command and control and power distribution across the Gateway and will perform other core functions, including hosting science investigations through accommodation of internal and external payloads and communicating with lunar surface expeditions,” NASA said.
HALO will also enable aggregation of additional habitable elements to extend the capabilities of the Gateway. The Northrop Grumman contract is worth US$935 million, and will see it commissioned to install and test HALO with Power and Propulsion Element (PPE).
That’s the propulsion system that Maxar Technologies built for NASA, and which will be used to put Gateway into lunar orbit. In total it will have 50 kilowatts of electric drive.
Editor: Dini Listiyani
