Image: boeing.mediaroom.com
Last year, NASA in the program NextSTEP combined with six companies to develop spacecraft designed to study deep space. Now Boeing - one of the six, showed how it might look like the product. The company showed its project images lunar station and the spacecraft, which will be able to send people to Mars to the moon's orbit.
What the station?
Deep Space Gateway - station that Boeing wants to collect in lunar orbit. It can conduct important experiments for the human exploration of space. Also, it could be docked other spacecraft, using a system similar to the ISS. But the main purpose of the station - the base for the ship Deep Space Transport, who can send humans to Mars. Transport ship will have extensive accommodations to space travelers were able to withstand a long journey. Astronauts can stay on board or send a lander to the planet to study its surface.
Image: boeing.mediaroom.com
As the ship and the station will use solar electric propulsion system - a promising technology which NASA previously installed on the Dawn space probe and continues to develop for future missions to Mars. Boeing said it plans to send the station to orbit the moon by four launches new NASA Space Launch System rocket extra heavy. If all goes well, the launch and assembly Deep Space Gateway will begin in 2020.
Source: the Boeing
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