Two private U.S. companies are planning to place an expandable habitat in the moon's orbit by the end of 2022 to serve as a lunar depot.
In a statement released this week, Bigelow Aerospace and United Launch Alliance (ULA) called the B330 expandable module and an effort to "support the nation's re-energized plans for returning to the moon" and "a strong complement to other plans intended to eventually put people on Mars."
"This commercial lunar depot would provide anchorage for significant lunar business development in addition to offering NASA and other governments the Moon as a new exciting location to conduct long-term exploration and astronaut training," the statement quoted Robert Bigelow, president of Bigelow Aerospace, as saying.
According to the statement, the B330 is a standalone commercial space station that can operate in low Earth orbit, cislunar space and beyond.
A single B330 is comparable to one third of the current pressurized volume of the entire International Space Station, it said.
Currently, Bigelow Aerospace is developing two B330 commercial space station habitats that will be ready for launch any time after 2020.
Under the plan by the two companies, the B330 would first be launched to low Earth orbit on a ULA Vulcan 562 rocket, the only commercial launch vehicle in development today with sufficient performance and a large enough payload fairing to carry the habitat.
Then, Bigelow Aerospace will outfit the habitat and demonstrate it is working properly.
Once the B330 is fully operational, ULA will launch two more Vulcan rockets, each carrying 35 tons of cryogenic propellant to low Earth orbit.
There, all of the cryogenic propellant would be transferred to one of the two rockets' Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage (ACES), which would rendezvous with the B330 and perform multiple maneuvers to deliver the habitat to its final position in low lunar orbit.
