Jane Edwards
Northrop Grumman has unveiled plans for the central module of NASA’s Lunar Gateway, including the module’s planned launch with Maxar Technologies’ Power and Propulsion Element from a spaceport in Florida by 2023, the NASASpaceflight website reported Friday.
Northrop eliminated the service module and made other modifications to the Habitation and Logistics Outpost module due to HALO’s co-manifested launch with Maxar’s PPE platform.
Dave Hastman, vice president of human exploration and operations at Northrop, told the website in a July interview about the potential benefits of testing HALO and PPE on the ground and launching them together.
“You can retire a lot of uncertainties by testing combined in that way. And you’re eliminating a launch and one of the dockings. So from a risk perspective, from NASA’s perspective, it’s definitely a better way to go,†Hastman said.
HALO and PPE will be developed separately and Hastman said he anticipates both elements to be integrated at the launch site approximately three to four months before launch.
HALO is slated for a preliminary design review in October, multi-element critical design assessment later this year or early 2021 and a systems critical design review by June 2021.
