Six contractors have begun work on NASA’s gateway to deep space

NASA has a problem. It has a big rocket under development. It has a shiny new spacecraft to fly into deep space. And it has a cadre of brilliant astronauts waiting in a long line to fly beyond low-Earth orbit. But the SLS rocket, Orion spacecraft and crew members have nowhere to go—there is no Moon lander, and asteroids and Mars are too far away for now.

NASA plans to address its problem by parking a “deep space” habitat in a location near the Moon, which astronauts could visit and use to become acclimated to life beyond low-Earth orbit. President Obama mentioned deep space habitats earlier this month, when he reiterated his call for NASA to send humans to Mars. “I'm excited to announce that we are working with our commercial partners to build new habitats that can sustain and transport astronauts on long-duration missions in deep space,” Obama said.

This wasn’t really a new announcement, as NASA has been working on the habitat program for a couple of years. Nevertheless, before the president's mention, this NextSTEP program had received surprisingly little attention given its significance—it might be the most important contract NASA awards for next decade.

The NextSTEP contract merits attention for two reasons, beyond providing an essential destination for NASA’s astronauts and exploration vehicles in the 2020s. For one, these funds will not just go toward a one-off outpost in deep space. Rather, if the habitat works well it could serve as a template for a habitation module for astronauts to travel in from Earth to Mars, and a modified version could also serve as living quarters on the surface of the red planet itself. Ultimately the contract could be worth tens of billions of dollars, if not more. A second reason is that NASA has legitimately opened up the competition to a startling diversity of contractors, from traditional aerospace giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing down to small, relative newcomers, like Bigelow Aerospace and NanoRacks.

To get a sense of the scope of the program, Ars met earlier this year with Matt Simon, the habitation lead for NASA’s Evolvable Mars Campaign. The discussion happened in August, shortly after the NextSTEP program had moved into “Phase II,” where six companies will receive a total of $65 million through the end of 2017 to refine their concepts for a deep-space habitat and build a ground-based prototype to test the form, fit, and function. This will set the stage for Phase III, likely to be awarded in 2018 or 2019, which will kick off the construction of flight hardware.

The nominal plan is to launch the habitat sometime in the mid-2020s, and thereafter NASA intends to send human crews to the habitat once per year for 30 to 60 days at a time. “Eventually we would like to build up the duration of time that we can stay at this habitat to longer and longer durations that are more analogous to the durations we would see on a Mars mission, or at least sufficiently long to test out the things we need to test out,” Simon said. NASA would like to conduct a year-long mission in deep space by the end of the 2020s.

Is this the vehicle?

As Obama said, NASA has embarked upon a "Journey to Mars." While the plan may change to include lunar landings as a stepping stone to Mars, the space agency does intend to try and venture back into deep space for the first time since the Apollo program. Whatever destination it chooses, NASA's ambitions will begin with the deep space habitat, because it is an affordable first step, costing hundreds of millions or a few billion dollars initially, instead of multiple billions needed for a full-blown expedition to the Moon's surface, Mars or elsewhere in deep space. "This is the right next step," Simon said. "We need to understand how to live in deep space, how to live off of our planet."

The first habitat launched in the 2020s won’t be exactly the same as the vehicle NASA eventually sends to Mars. Rather, it will serve as a prototype to help the space agency understand the capabilities, technologies, and systems needed for astronauts to survive for long periods in deep space. Some of those systems can be tested on the ground or the existing space station, but others can only be tested further from Earth.

Some of the biggest challenges in deep space include solar particle events, galactic cosmic rays, and the lack of understanding about the rate of cancer incidence due to these events. And it’s not just the biology—NASA is unsure of how computer systems and other space station hardware will fare for long periods of time beyond Earth’s natural radiation shielding. A station near the Moon will also give mission control practice with communications delays, and, during its dormant period, allow engineers to test its autonomous mode.

Whatever design NASA ultimately settles upon will become the backbone of its journey to Mars, by serving as both the transit habitat and as a surface outpost either on the Moon or Mars. There are key differences, of course—a transit habitat would have to be optimized for zero gravity, and a Moon and Mars habitat would face different dust environments.

“What we’ve tried to do is make sure the transit habitat, and the surface habitat all have a similar structure, and are similarly outfitted to some degree,” Simon said. “We’re trying to make as much common as possible between those three habitats to make sure the investments for the transit habitat feed forward for the surface habitat, and we save some money.”

New contractors

NASA has welcomed a broad range of companies into the competition for building a deep space habitat. The six finalists are Bigelow Aerospace, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Orbital ATK, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and NanoRacks. Of those, Boeing has the most experience with space hardware, as the company has been serving as prime contractor for the International Space Station for longer than the ISS has been orbiting. But NASA wanted a broader approach to this new venture, Simon said. “The more minds you put to the problem, the more different perspectives, the better overall solutions we’re going to come up with,” he said.

NanoRacks is perhaps the most surprising entrant. The small, Houston-based company was founded in 2009 to help commercialize the space station, and provides a way for companies and researchers to get experiments onto station. It also deploys cubesats.

For its version of the habitat, NanoRacks will partner with Space Systems Loral and the rocket company United Launch Alliance, to study converting United Launch Alliance’s Centaur upper stage into a pressurized habitable volume in space. “For us, it’s back to the future,” said NanoRacks founder Jeff Manber. “People may not realize that America’s first station, Skylab, was an upper stage that had been re-purposed.” The company believes its approach will prove the most cost-effective.

Manber said the number of companies involved in the project, from both traditional and new space backgrounds, mirrors a changing industry. “The mix of companies reflects accurately the state of the industry today,” he said. New space gets a chance to compete with the old lions of aerospace.

Congress

Many questions remain about the viability of NASA’s Journey to Mars, and some members of Congress have pressed the agency to release more details about how it plans to get from low-Earth orbit to the surface of our planetary next-door neighbor. Those members are keenly interested in the deep space habitat program, because it represents a tangible step toward Mars.

One of them, Oklahoma Republican House member Jim Bridenstine, has pressed during Congressional hearings this year for NASA to accelerate the habitat program, and said he hopes the Phase II awards produce high-fidelity mockups rather than very basic reproductions. Bridenstine calls habitats important not just for Mars transits, but also enabling other activities like obtaining water from asteroids and the Moon.

"Deep space habitats are vital to developing the space economy and expanding our presence beyond low Earth orbit,” Bridenstine told Ars. “We now know that water is abundant on the Moon and throughout the solar system. Correspondingly, propellent is available. Once these resources are exploited and stored on orbit the cost of the space enterprise will decrease immensely.”

With Congress watching closely, it's a solid bet that the habitat program will move forward. NASA has not specified how far it will winnow the playing field of six entrants when it comes to the Phase III contract awards at the end of this decade, although it may be reduced all the way down to one concept, or a combination of two. That will depend upon budget levels, of course, but the same could be said of virtually every other NASA program.

Listing image by Boeing