Establishing a Lunar Habitat

Now that the United States is officially getting back into space exploration, the Moon now seems to be the focus — or at least the starting point — of a lot of plans involving space travel. The Trump administration has redirected NASA’s priorities to settling on our lunar neighbor before Mars, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said the BFR project will be a key factor in creating a lunar base.

To continue the trend, Bigelow Aerospace and the United Launch Alliance (ULA) announced last week they would be collaborating to design an inflatable habitat. The habitat would be launched into space by the end of 2022, and eventually function as a lunar depot. Bigelow Aerospace is designing two B330 expandable modules, while ULA is providing the Vulcan 562 configuration rocket that will carry the module into low Earth orbit. A single B330 is roughly one-third the volume of the International Space Station.

After the Vulcan rocket brings the B330 into low Earth orbit, it will inflate, and Bigelow will outfit it with additional equipment and put it through a series of tests. Once it’s fully up and running, additional launches will be carried out to provide 35 tons of cryogenic propellant to the module. It will then be maneuvered into its final location: low lunar orbit.