Lunar Gateway
The Lunar Gateway, or simply Gateway, is the first planned extraterrestrial space station. It will be placed in lunar orbit and is intended to serve as a solar-powered communication hub, science laboratory, and short-term habitation module for government-agency astronauts, as well as a holding area for rovers and other robots. It is a multinational collaborative project involving four of the International Space Station partner agencies: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and Canadian Space Agency (CSA). It is planned to be both the first space station beyond low Earth orbit and the first space station to orbit the Moon. Formerly known as the Deep Space Gateway (DSG), the station was renamed Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G) in NASA's 2018 proposal for the 2019 United States federal budget. When the NASA budget was signed into law on February 15, 2019, US$450 million had been committed by Congress to preliminary studies. The science disciplines to be studied on the Gateway are expected to include planetary science, astrophysics, Earth observation, heliophysics, fundamental space biology, and human health and performance. Construction is planned to take place in the 2020s. The International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG), which is composed of 14 space agencies including NASA, has concluded that Gateway systems will be critical method in expanding human presence to the Moon, to Mars, and deeper into the Solar System. The project is expected to play a major role in NASA's Artemis program, after 2024. While the project is led by NASA, the Gateway is meant to be developed, serviced, and utilized in collaboration with the CSA, ESA, JAXA, and commercial partners. It will serve as the staging point for both robotic and crewed exploration of the lunar south pole and is the proposed staging point for NASA's Deep Space Transport concept for transport to Mars. An earlier NASA proposal for a cislunar station had been made public in 2012 and was dubbed the Deep Space Habitat.
