Drawing on lessons learned from the ISS, the Gateway, planned for construction in the early 2020s, will be a lunar-orbit operations and research outpost serving as a communications hub, science laboratory, short-term habitation module, and holding area for rovers and other robots. It also is intended to be a staging point for human and robotic exploration of the Moon and, in the early 2030s, the launch point for NASA’s first crewed mission to Mars.

Boeing also is responsible for maintaining the ISS at peak performance levels so that the full value of the unique research laboratory is available to NASA, its international partners, other U.S. government agencies, and private companies. It is contracted to continue providing engineering support services, resources, and personnel to the station through Sept. 20, 2020, although Mulqueen said a four-year extension is being negotiated.

“Our engineering support services include sustainment of the platform, operations in orbit, and the flight operations director; providing spares for parts that are in wear-out and upgrades for those we’re trying to enhance,” he explained. “That will continue into the future, to keep ISS flying through U.S. government and agencies requirements to develop spaceflight and continue human spaceflight knowledge gained from working and living in orbit before we take on the rigors of deep space, where problems are harder to recover from.”

Boeing also is responsible for maintaining the ISS at peak performance levels so that the full value of the unique research laboratory is available to NASA, its international partners, other U.S. government agencies, and private companies.

Building and sustaining a permanent crewed space station in low-Earth orbit for two decades with no serious problems and no casualties on the ISS itself has been an unprecedented success for Boeing and all those involved. But it required developing a spirit and resourcefulness unseen since the first four centuries of the European exploration and conquest of the Western Hemisphere.

 

“It’s one thing to be able to take a 20-year-old airplane into a hangar and upgrade the cockpit, change out the seats, replace the galley, etc., and keep flying it. We don’t have that access to the ISS, so we rely on a lot of on-orbit sensing data to understand what is going on. We can identify activities, from crew exercising to berthing of a visiting vehicle, due to the dynamic sensing we do,” Mulqueen said.

“We do a lot of data recording and assessments dialogue with NASA about what we’re seeing. There’s a lot of science behind the basic operations and whether we have correctly predicted wear-out rather than just waiting for something to fail.”