The Hill by Mark R. Whittington 6/26/2022
A recently leaked NASA document shows there is bad news and some good news for the Artemis return to the moon program, according to a recent article in Ars Technica. The bad news is, largely because of costs associated with building the Lunar Gateway, the pace of Artemis missions to the moon slows to an unsustainable crawl, with years between flights and the establishment of a lunar base pushed off to the 2030s. The good news is that many of these problems might be solved by canceling the Lunar Gateway.
The Lunar Gateway, once known as the Deep Space Gateway when it was first envisioned in the Obama administration and then the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, is planned for an elliptical lunar orbit and would, as the name implies, serve as a gateway to the lunar surface. Astronauts on board the Orion would dock at the Lunar Gateway and transfer to a Human Landing System (HLS) to travel the rest of the way to the lunar surface.
NASA chose to keep the Gateway and repurpose it for Artemis primarily because the Orion cannot enter low-lunar orbit or depart after completing its mission. The Orion can dock with the Lunar Gateway in a higher elliptical polar orbit, passing 3,000 kilometers (about 1,865 miles) above the lunar north pole and 70,000 kilometers (about 43,500 miles) above the lunar south pole. The HLS would depart from the Lunar Gateway and then land on the lunar surface. After the surface mission is completed, the HLS would lift off, dock with the Gateway, and the crew would transfer back to the Orion to return to Earth. Meanwhile, the Lunar Gateway would be a base where the HLS would be refurbished and refueled.
More:
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/3537105-its-time-for-nasa-to-cancel-the-lunar-gateway/
