Prototype Moon Habitat

Lockheed Martin Is Building a Prototype Moon Habitat From Old Space Shuttle Parts

There's no word on when the real thing will be built, but we hope it will be soon.

Lockheed Martin
 
By Avery Thompson

Fifty years ago humans walked on the moon. Twenty years ago humans started living in orbit for months at a time. Where will we go next? For NASA, one of the most promising proposals is to build a space habitat for astronauts that will orbit the moon.

To help NASA achieve such a complicated endeavor, Lockheed Martin, one of the contractors for the habitat, is building a full-scale prototype out of an old cargo container designed to fly on the Space Shuttle.

An orbiting moon station has a number of unique challenges that the International Space Station doesn't have. Chief among them is that a moon habitat would be much farther away. The crew of such a station would have to operate much more independently than the ISS crew, and supply missions would be less frequent, meaning astronauts could only stay on the moon station for about a month or two.

It's also unlikely that astronauts would be able to man aboard the lunar station all the time, which means the base must be able to manage some of its functions autonomously. Solving this problem isn't as simple as just putting a computer on the station—it will require a completely new design from the ground up.

Lockheed Martin engineers are building their prototype here on Earth using the Donatello Multi-Purpose Logistics Module from the Space Shuttle. The engineers will also incorporate new technologies like mixed-reality headsets and 3D printing to speed up the prototyping process.

The aerospace contractor predicts an 18-month-long development time, at the end of which Lockheed Martin will have a clear understanding of the challenges involved when building a moon station. Then, if NASA gives them the green light, they can begin designing and building the real thing.

If everything goes according to plan, astronauts might be living in orbit around the moon by the end of the next decade.