WASHINGTON, Dec. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA and the
Canadian Space Agency (CSA) finalized an agreement between
the United States and Canada to collaborate on the Gateway, an
outpost orbiting the Moon that will provide vital support for a
sustainable, long-term return of astronauts to the lunar surface as
part of NASA's Artemis program. This Gateway agreement further
solidifies the broad effort by the United
States to engage international partners in sustainable lunar
exploration as part of the Artemis program and to demonstrate
technologies needed for human missions to Mars.
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Under this agreement, CSA will provide the Gateway's external
robotics system, including a next-generation robotic arm, known as
Canadarm3. CSA also will provide robotic interfaces for Gateway
modules, which will enable payload installation including that of
the first two scientific instruments aboard the Gateway. The
agreement also marks NASA's commitment to provide two crew
opportunities for Canadian astronauts on Artemis missions, one to
the Gateway and one on Artemis II.
"Canada was the first
international partner to commit to advancing the Gateway in early
2019, they signed the Artemis Accords in October, and now we're
excited to formalize this partnership for lunar exploration," said
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.
"This agreement represents an evolution of our cooperation with CSA
providing the next generation of robotics that have supported
decades of missions in space on the space shuttle and International
Space Station, and now, for Artemis."
CSA will be responsible for end-to-end external robotics,
including engineering and operations. Canadarm3 will move
end-over-end to reach many parts of the Gateway's exterior, where
its anchoring "hand" will plug into specially designed interfaces.
Delivery to the lunar outpost is targeted in 2026 via a U.S.
commercial logistics supply flight.
"Gateway will enable a robust, sustainable, and eventually
permanent human presence on the lunar surface where we can prove
out many of the skills, operations, and technologies that will be
key for future human Mars missions," said Kathy Lueders, NASA's associate administrator
for human exploration and operations.
Approximately one-sixth the size of the International Space
Station, the Gateway will function as a way station located tens of
thousands of miles at its farthest distance from the lunar surface,
in a near-rectilinear halo orbit. From this lunar vantage, NASA and
its international and commercial partners will conduct
unprecedented deep space science and technology
investigations. It will serve as a rendezvous point for
astronauts traveling to lunar orbit aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft
and Space Launch System rocket prior to transit to
low-lunar orbit and the surface of the Moon.
"CSA's advanced robotics contribution with Canadarm3 builds upon
our long spaceflight history together, enabling us to perform
critical long-term sustainability and maintainability functions,
overall inspections of the external Gateway and its attached
vehicles, and servicing of external payloads in support of our
worldwide research initiatives," said Dan
Hartman, Gateway program manager at NASA's Johnson Space
Center in Houston. "Our efforts are well underway on Gateway
to integrate CSA's robotics system with arm attachment points
and smaller dexterous adaptors already being incorporated into
the individual Gateway modules including the PPE (power and
propulsion element), HALO (habitation and logistics outpost),
Gateway logistics, and international habitation element
designs."
NASA astronauts will board a commercially developed lander for
the final leg of the journey to the lunar surface, and the agency
has contracted with U.S. industry to develop the first two Gateway
components, PPE and HALO, as well as logistics
resupply for Gateway.
In October, NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) signed an
agreement solidifying ESA's contributions to the Gateway to
provide habitation and refueling modules, along with enhanced lunar
communications and service modules for Orion. In March, NASA
selected the first two scientific investigations to fly
aboard the Gateway, one from NASA and the other from ESA. ESA
developed the European Radiation Sensors Array, or ERSA, and NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center is building the Heliophysics
Environmental and Radiation Measurement Experiment Suite, or
HERMES. The two mini space weather stations will split the work,
with ERSA monitoring space radiation at higher energies with a
focus on astronaut protection, while HERMES monitors lower energies
critical to scientific investigations of the Sun. All of the
Gateway's international partners will collaborate to share the
scientific data that will be transmitted to Earth. Additional
scientific cooperative payloads will be selected to fly aboard the
outpost.
In addition to supporting lunar surface missions, the Gateway
will support activities that will test technologies needed for
human missions to Mars. Using the Gateway, NASA will
demonstrate remote management and long-term reliability of
autonomous spacecraft systems and other technologies.
Learn more about NASA's Gateway program at:
https://nasa.gov/gateway
Learn more about NASA's Artemis program at:
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis
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SOURCE NASA