NASA plans for space exploration have evolved within the context of the recent development of the lunar orbital platform gateway concept. The gateway concept involves multiple components that enable a…

This federal contract award to Purdue University supports research and development focused on enabling the use of a near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) as a baseline trajectory for NASA's Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway concept. The $738,822.02 cooperative agreement provides funding for spacecraft navigation, targeting, and guidance capabilities required to access various orbits and trajectories in the Earth-Moon system. This effort supports the expansion of human activities into cislunar space by helping establish a reusable, extensible, and maintainable transportation network. The contract does not have a set-aside designation. As a leading research university, Purdue University regularly supports NASA and other federal agencies through both contract and grant awards across a wide range of technical domains relevant to space exploration, defense, and other national priorities.

NASA plans for space exploration have evolved within the context of the recent development of the lunar orbital platform gateway concept. The gateway concept involves multiple components that enable a potentially crewed facility in a libration point orbit to serve as a hub for cislunar operations but also as a nexus, or staging location, for operations to destinations beyond the earth-moon neighborhood. Although the details and parameters will likely undergo various adjustments and updates, some of the core elements remain critical for the long-term plans to engage humans in space exploration and expand human operations into cislunar space. The current baseline orbit for the primary lunar orbital platform gateway facility is a near rectilinear halo orbit (nrho). The nrho exists within the dynamical constructs of a multi-body gravitational environment; such trajectories are members of the halo family of orbits in the earth-moon system as perturbed by the sun. However, the nrho is only one possible type of motion in cislunar space; other trajectories, transfer arcs, relative behaviors and operational maneuvers in such an environment are also critical to support cislunar activities. The expansion of human activities into cislunar space is the broader basis for establishing a transportation system for cislunar space reusable, extensible and maintainable. Such a transportation network requires access to various trajectories as well as the navigation, targeting and guidance capabilities to fly them. This effort supports the current concept as a step to enable the use of a sample multi-body orbit, e.g., the nrho, as a potential baseline trajectory in the cislunar regime but also to deliver spacecraft to the lunar surface and various other types of orbits in cislunar space with the eventual option to reach other destinations beyond the moon.