Two US Aerospace companies have announced a plan to build a habitat in lunar orbit by 2022 , offering the US a route to search the Moon .
Bigelow Aerospace and the United Launch Alliance ( ULA ) revealed their plan yesterday . The former wants to build an inflatable habitat called the B330 , and launch it on the ULA ’s newfangled Vulcan rocket .
The musical theme is to test this habitat in Earth orbital cavity for a year or so , launch in 2020 . Then , it would be be active into lunar scope , where spaceman could chatter it .
" This commercial-grade lunar depot would provide anchorage ground for significant lunar business sector development in addition to offering NASA and other governments the Moon as a unexampled exciting location to carry long - terminus exploration and astronaut training , ” Robert Bigelow , chair of Bigelow Aerospace , said in astatement .
Bigelow ’s inflatable technology is often touted as a elbow room to build space habitats in the future tense . The habitats establish succinctly and expand once they reach blank space by being pump full of gas . The company presently has a prototype home ground , the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module ( BEAM),installed on the International Space Station .
The B330 is an advancement on BEAM , providing a big living surface area . As its name imply , it has 330 three-dimensional meters ( 11,650 three-dimensional metrical unit ) of outer space , compared to BEAM ’s 16 cubic meters ( 565 cubic foot ) .
It would be pushed to the Moon by the upper state of the Vulcan rocket ( which will establish for the first time in 2019 ) , call the Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage ( ACES ) . Two of these would be placed in orbit , with one refueling the other , before attaching to the B330 and taking it into lunar domain .
In the telecasting above , Bigelow Aerospace suggests that crews could be transmit to the B330 by SpaceX ’s Crew Dragon spacecraft . The home ground has space for up to six people on board .
Last year , Bigelow and the ULA announced they wanted to work together on aspace hotelof sorts , send multiple B330s into Earth orbital cavity . That design seems to have evolved pretty , perhaps in line with shifting American space goal .
“ Our lunar store plan is a strong complement to other plans intend to finally put multitude on Mars , ” say Bigelow , add it could “ support the nation ’s re - energized plan for returning to the Moon . ”
