NASA selects first two scientific payloads for Lunar Gateway

The Lunar Gateway is planned to be a space station in lunar orbit that could be manned and serve as a communications hub and holding area for rovers.

The radiation instrument package was built by the European Space Agency. It is intended to help understand how to keep astronauts safe by monitoring the radiation exposure in Gateway particular orbit.

The space weather instrument suite, which was built by NASA, will observe solar particles and solar wind created by the Sun.

Additional scientific payloads will be selected to fly aboard the Gateway in the future, says NASA.

“Building the Gateway with our commercial and international partners is a critical component of sustainable lunar exploration and the Artemis program,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “Using the Gateway as a platform for robotic and human exploration around the Moon will help inform what we do on the lunar surface as well as prepare us for our next giant leap – human exploration of Mars.”

On the Sun-monitoring investigation, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science, said:

“Our Sun and the environment around it is very dynamic. This instrument suite will help us observe the particles and energy that our star emits — and mitigate the risks to astronauts at the Moon and eventually Mars,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “Not only will we learn more about our space environment, but we’ll also learn how to improve forecasting space weather wherever the Artemis Generation journeys away from Earth.”

On the Gateway itself, NASA states:

Astronauts will visit the Gateway at least once per year, but they won’t stay year-round like crew aboard the International Space Station. The Gateway is much smaller, too. Its interior is about the size of a studio apartment (whereas the space station is larger than a six-bedroom house). Once docked, astronauts can live and work aboard the spaceship for up to three months at a time, conduct science experiments, and take trips to the surface of the Moon.

Even without crew present, cutting-edge robotics and computers will operate experiments inside and outside the spaceship, automatically returning data back to Earth.

NASA awarded Maxar Technologies a contract in May 2019 to develop the power and propulsion element which will provide solar arrays and manoeuvring capabilities. NASA says it is also continuing negotiations with Northrop Grumman to build the habitation and logistics outpost, dubbed HALO, the first pressurised module for crew visiting the Gateway.

The first major part of the Lunar Gateway, which will provide power and propulsion for the spaceship, is targeted to launch on a private rocket in 2022.