Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, January 8 (Xinhua)-- according to a designer of NASA's lunar orbiting space station Gateway, the living area of the space station will be so small that astronauts will not even be able to stand upright in it.

NASA and its international partners plan to start building the Gateway space station in lunar orbit in the next few years. When completed by the end of the decade, the space laboratory will be 1/6 the size of the International Space Station and have two dwelling modules, one called the International residence Module (International Habitation module,I-HAB) and the other Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), developed by Northrop Grumman of the United States.

Ren é Waclavicek, a space architect and design researcher at Austria-based LIQUIFER Space Systems, said at the Czech Space week conference in Brno, Czech Republic: "the international cabin will have about 8 cubic meters of habitable space, in other words, this will be a room of 2 meters by 2 meters, and this will be a shared space for four astronauts."

The designer managed to provide about 1.5 cubic meters of private space for each astronaut living in the international cabin, with doors that can be closed. However, living on the Gateway space station will be a challenge, not only because of the narrow living area, but also because most of the space in the cabin will be occupied by noisy and vibrating life support equipment, whose constant buzzing may seriously affect people's nerves.

The U.S.-made HALO module could be launched as early as 2024, while the I-Hab module is not expected to be launched before 2027. Waclawicek said the team is currently conducting a critical design review, an important milestone before the start of hardware manufacturing, and has begun building a life-size simulation model to test human interaction with the habitat environment.

CTOnews.com learned that Gateway will be the first human space station in lunar orbit to support NASA's deep space exploration program, as well as space launch system (Space Launch System,SLS) rockets, Orion spacecraft and manned landing systems (Human Landing System,HLS) to put astronauts on the moon.

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