Jane Edwards
Lockheed Martin has provided an initial look of a 22-foot-long habitat prototype it has built for NASA in support of deep space missions, the Orlando Sentinel reported Thursday.
The company unveiled at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida the habitat, which is designed to accommodate up to four astronauts for a month to 60 days and is based on the refurbished Donatello Multi-Purpose Logistics Module.
Lockheed is one of six companies that secured separate contracts worth up to $65 million combined in 2016 to help NASA research concepts and build ground deep space habitat prototypes.
Bill Pratt, program manager at Lockheed, said the 15-foot-wide prototype also features racks for life support systems, science experiments, robotic work stations, exercise machines and sleep stations.
Lockheed’s team of developers used augmented reality-based headsets to get a picture of the capsule’s layout and facilitate early detection of errors.
The crew capsule’s final version will be integrated into the proposed space port, Deep Space Gateway, designed to support future manned missions to the moon, Mars and other deep space destinations.
