INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Officials blame changing requirements for much of the delays and rising costs
NASA managers dramatically changed their plans for the Gateway program in 2020, when they decided to launch the PPE and HALO on the same
rocket, prompting major changes to their designs.Jared Isaacman, Trump's nominee for NASA administrator, declined to commit to the Gateway
program during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee on April 9
Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the committee's chairman, pressed Isaacman on the Lunar Gateway
Cruz is one of the Gateway program's biggest backers in Congress since it is managed by Johnson Space Center in Texas
"What are the opportunities the Gateway presents to us? And where are some of the challenges, because I think the Gateway is a component of
many programs that are over budget and behind schedule."
The pressure shell for the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module
arrived in Gilbert, Arizona, last week for internal outfitting.
Credit:
NASA/Josh
Valcarcel
Nevertheless, the Gateway program achieved a milestone one week before Isaacman's confirmation hearing
The metallic pressure shell for the HALO module was shipped from its factory in Italy to Arizona
The HALO module is only partially complete, and it lacks life support systems and other hardware it needs to operate in space.Over the next
couple of years, Northrop Grumman will outfit the habitat with those components and connect it with the Power and Propulsion Element under
construction at Maxar Technologies in Silicon Valley
This stage of spacecraft assembly, along with prelaunch testing, often uncovers problems that can drive up costs and trigger more delays.Ars
recently spoke with Jon Olansen, a bio-mechanical engineer and veteran space shuttle flight controller who now manages the Gateway program
A transcript of our conversation with Olansen is below
It is lightly edited for clarity and brevity.Ars: The HALO module has arrived in Arizona from Italy
What's next?Olansen: This HALO module went through significant effort from the primary and secondary structure perspective out at Thales
That was most of their focus in getting the vehicle ready to ship to Arizona
Now that it's in Arizona, Northrop is setting it up in their facility there in Gilbert to be able to do all of the outfitting of the systems
we need to actually execute the missions we want to do, keep the crew safe, and enable the science that we're looking to do
So, if you consider your standard spacecraft, you're going to have all of your command-and-control capabilities, your avionics systems, your
computers, your network management, all of the things you need to control the vehicle
You're going to have your power distribution capabilities
HALO attaches to the Power and Propulsion Element, and it provides the primary power distribution capability for the entire station
So that'll all be part of HALO
You'll have your standard thermal systems for active cooling
can think of, from lighting, restraint, mobility aids, all the different types of crew systems
Then, of course, all of our science aspects
So we have payload lockers, both internally, as well as payload sites external that we'll have available, so pretty much all the different
systems that you would need for a human-rated spacecraft.Ars: What's the latest status of the Power and Propulsion Element?Olansen: PPE is
fairly well along in their assembly and integration activities
The central cylinder has been integrated with the propulsion tanks..
Their propulsion module is in good shape
They're working on the avionics shelves associated with that spacecraft
So, with both vehicles, we're really trying to get the assembly done in the next year or so, so we can get into integrated spacecraft
All the different activities that we're working on across the vehicles are making substantive progress
So, it's a matter of bringing them all in and doing the assembly and integration in the appropriate sequences, so that we get the vehicles
put together the way we need them and get to the point where we can actually power up the vehicles and do all the testing we need to do
Obviously, software is a key part of that development activity, once we power on the vehicles, making sure we can do all the control work
that we need to do for those vehicles.[There are] a couple of key pieces I will mention along those lines
On the PPE side, we have the electrical propulsion system
The thrusters associated with that system are being delivered
Those will go through acceptance testing at the Glenn Research Center [in Ohio] and then be integrated on the spacecraft out at Maxar; so
that work is ongoing as we speak
Out at ESA, ESA is providing the HALO lunar communication system
That'll be delivered later this year
That'll be installed on HALO as part of its integrated test and checkout and then launch on HALO
That provides the full communication capability down to the lunar surface for us, where PPE provides the communication capability back to
So, those are key components that we're looking to get delivered later this year.
Jon Olansen, manager of NASA's Gateway program at
Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Credit:
NASA/Andrew Carlsen
Ars: What's
the status of the electric propulsion thrusters for the PPE?Olansen: The first one has actually been delivered already, so we'll have the
opportunity to go through, like I said, the acceptance testing for those
The other flight units are right on the heels of the first one that was delivered
They'll make it through their acceptance testing, then get delivered to Maxar, like I said, for integration into PPE
So, that work is already in progress
[The Power and Propulsion Element will have three xenon-fueled 12-kilowatt Hall thrusters produced by Aerojet Rocketdyne, and four smaller
6-kilowatt thrusters.]Ars: The Government Accountability Office (GAO) outlined concerns last year about keeping the mass of Gateway within
the capability of its rocket
Has there been any progress on that issue? Will you need to remove components from the HALO module and launch them on a future mission? Will
Now that we're launching the two vehicles together, we're working mass management
Mass management is always an issue with spacecraft development, so it's no different for us
All of the things you described are all knobs that are in the trade space as we proceed, but fundamentally, we're working to design the
optimal spacecraft that we can, first
As we get all the components delivered, we can measure mass across all of those components, understand what our integrated mass looks like,
and we have several different options to make sure that we're able to execute the mission we need to execute
All of those will be balanced over time based on the impacts that are there
There's not a need for a lot of those decisions to happen today
Those that are needed from a design perspective, we've already made
So, really, what we're working through is being able to, at the appropriate time, make decisions necessary to fly the vehicle the way we
need to, to get out to NRHO [Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit, an elliptical orbit around the Moon], and then be able to execute the Artemis
What's the latest status of that problem?Olansen: There are a number of different risks that we work through as a program, as you'd expect
We continue to look at all possibilities and work through them with due diligence
That's our job, to be able to do that on a daily basis
With the stack controllability [issue], where that came from for GAO, we were early in the assessments of what the potential impacts could
be from visiting vehicles, not just any one [vehicle] but any visiting vehicle
We're a smaller space station than ISS, so making sure we understand the implications of thruster firings as vehicles approach the station,
and the implications associated with those, is where that stack controllability conversation came from.The bus that Maxar typically designs
doesn't have to generally deal with docking
Part of what we've been doing is working through ways that we can use the capabilities that are already built into that spacecraft
differently to provide us the control authority we need when we have visiting vehicles, as well as working with the visiting vehicles and
their design to make sure that they're minimizing the impact on the station
So, the combination of those two has largely, over the past year since that report came out, improved where we are from a stack
controllability perspective
We still have forward work to close out all of the different potential cases that are there
We'll continue to work through those
That's standard forward work, but we've been able to make some updates, some software updates, some management updates, and logic updates
that really allow us to control the stack effectively and have the right amount of control authority for the dockings and undockings that we
will need to execute for the missions.
