The Lunar Gateway, the lunar station in orbit that It was intended to be used as a strategic stop on trips to our satellite, it has suffered many delays since its manufacturing began. Today, after the withdrawal of financing from the United States Government, it is canceled. But even so it continues to give something to talk about. The latest conflict around it has arisen after it was shown that two important modules that were already manufactured and ready for launch have corroded. If the plan had remained on track, this would have been one more headache. In fact, it is equally so.
The facts. After the cancellation of the initial project, the company in charge of launching the two habitable modules of the Lunar Gateway has asked NASA to reuse it in the bases that are planned to be built on the lunar surface. The response of Jared Isaacman, the administrator of the space agency, It was making public a somewhat unpleasant problem. The metal of both modules has been corroded. How are they going to use them in those conditions?
The company responsible, Northrop Grumman, has not denied it, but it has removed all blame, accusing another company of what happened. According to them, it was the work of Thales Alenia Space, a Franco-Italian company that was commissioned to build the main structure of these modules.
Thales shows its face. Initially, the company in question did not respond to the accusations. However, a few days later, in a press release, have recognized the problem. They assure that a “well-known metallurgical behavior” has been detected in both modules and that they plan to solve it by the third quarter of 2026. They add that it is not a big problem, since something similar was detected in some modules of the International Space Station during its construction and that, after solving it, they continue to function without problems.
That metallurgical behavior must be their fancy way of talking about corrosion. They haven’t mentioned this much more unpleasant word, but they seem to recognize the problem.
NASA doesn’t trust. At the moment, it does not appear that NASA intends to wait for Thales to solve the problem in the third quarter. In his statements to the press, Isaacman recalled that if the Lunar Gateway had gone ahead, this problem would have delayed the launch, scheduled for 2026. It would possibly have been postponed until 2030. It would have been a serious inconvenience, so they do not believe that now it is worth trusting that it will be easily solved.
Lunar Gateway Halo Module
a cursed station. Lunar Gateway has suffered many delays since the project was launched. Initially, a first component aimed at obtaining energy and propulsion was going to be launched in 2022. Later, NASA decided that it was more efficient to send it together with the first habitable module. That delayed the first launch until 2024. However, there were a series of problems related to the calculation of the mass of both components and, in order to solve it, the launch was delayed until 2026. The Trump Government saw that a lot of time was being wasted and a lot of money was spent, while China took steps towards the Moonso he chose to withdraw funding from the project. In March 2026 its cancellation was announced.
And now what? Initially, in Artemis III and in the program’s later missions The Lunar Gateway would be used to dock both the lander and the capsule with the astronauts. There, the two crew members destined for landing would go from one ship to the other. Now, however, it is planned to dock both vehicles directly in orbit, without the need for a lunar station.
NASA’s goalsInstead, they focus on building a base directly on the surface of the Moon starting in 2028. But there’s still plenty of time left for that. First, we will have to check if everything is going well in 2027. What is clear is that, given what we have seen, there is not much faith in recycling the Lunar Gateway habitable modules. As much as Northrop regrets it.
Image | NASA | Northrop Grumman
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