SpaceX will launch NASA’s lunar Gateway on Falcon Heavy rocket - WKMG News 6 & ClickOrlando

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NASA has awarded SpaceX a $338 million contract to deliver a key part of the Artemis moon program, two pieces of an orbiting space outpost providing a gateway to the moon for astronauts.

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy will launch the lunar Gateway propulsion system and the habitation module, the foundation of the orbiting space outpost, NASA announced Tuesday.

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Both elements of the gateway will liftoff in the giant nose cone of a Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center’s launchpad 39A no earlier than May 2024.

Falcon Heavy has launched three times, including during a 2018 maiden flight that sent a Tesla Roadster with a dummy named Starman to orbit Mars. The rocket includes 27 Merlin engines between the center core and two Falcon 9 boosters strapped to its side. Combined, the engines are capable of producing more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.

NASA is still striving toward landing American boots back on the moon by 2024, a goal set under the Trump Administration.

The U.S. space agency’s launch services program will manage the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launch on NASA’s end overseeing the build, delivery and launch.

While the International Space Station orbits about 200 miles above Earth, the Gateway, about one-sixth the size of the football-field-length ISS, will orbit the moon tens of thousands of miles away. The outpost will serve as a docking station for NASA’s Orion spacecraft where astronauts will stop before using a human lander system to touch down on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

The two pieces SpaceX will launch include Gateway’s Power and Propulsion Element, or PPE, built by Maxar Technologies and the Habitation and Logistics Outpost, or HALO, being built by Northrop Grumman.

The Gateway’s service module is being constructed by the European Space Agency. The service module includes life support systems for Gateway including temperature control, electricity, water, oxygen and nitrogen. That element is slated to launch on the second flight of NASA’s Space Launch System, the agency’s Artemis rocket.

According to NASA’s partners at the ESA, astronauts will be able to live on the Gateway for 90 days at a time.

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SpaceX will launch NASA’s lunar Gateway on Falcon Heavy rocket - WKMG News 6 & ClickOrlando
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