Deep space gateway architecture to support multiple exploration & demonstration goals

Abstract

The international spaceflight community, including multiple government agencies and industry partners, is coalescing around plans for extending human exploration of lunar space and beyond to Mars. A key element of these plans is NASA's Deep Space Gateway in cislunar space. Architectures for the Gateway should provide flexibility and resiliency to meet the objectives of multiple partners and demonstrate technologies for future missions. NASA's top priority objective for the Gateway is to serve as a waypoint for transits to the Mars vicinity and beyond. A second priority is technology and operation demonstrations, as identified in published NASA cislunar objectives, including the selection and testing of next generation spacecraft and life support systems. These demonstrations will support readiness for riskier long duration deep space transit missions. International partners have expressed interest in use of the Gateway as an outpost for crewed lunar sorties. For the multiple commercial and public/private partnerships that might have interest in use of the Gateway to supplement lunar surface exploration and exploitation; this unique platform could support communications, telerobotics, and even sample return. Boeing's cislunar proving ground architecture and operation concept address NASA's two fundamental goals, providing a lunar Gateway for Mars exploration and providing a testbed for technology and operations demonstrations, while also enabling possibilities for international and commercial partners. The Boeing architecture is based upon the heavy lift capability of the Space Launch System (SLS) and the associated capability to co-manifest a 10t element with Orion on a single launch to cislunar space, allowing relevant cargo to arrive with every cislunar crew. Key technology and operations demonstrations include deep space environment mitigations, deep space life support, electric propulsion, automated rendezvous & docking, operating with communications lag, and telerobotic operations. The Gateway is a flexible platform that can be positioned in optimal orbits for deep space proving ground objectives, lunar surface operations and Mars mission aggregation and departure point. This paper describes Boeing's Gateway architecture concept and analyzes how the architecture enables both exploration objectives and proving ground objectives. Using elements built with proven Boeing commercial and human spaceflight technologies, a flexible architecture is created to support known and future objectives based on open internal and external integration concepts. The concept relies heavily on standardization of interfaces such as data, power, docking, rendezvous, and communication. These standards allow for multiple commercial and international partners to develop and integrate their own exploration elements and technology demonstrations. The Boeing architecture is also focused on crew safety, including radiation exposure protection & contingency EVA capabilities. The Boeing architecture demonstrates that near term exploration objectives, such as lunar surface interactions, can be accomplished while demonstrating and preparing for full Mars mission capability.