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Human Operations Beyond LEO by the End of the Decade: An Affordable Near-Term "Stepping Stone"For more than a decade, several teams have assessed designs for a long-duration free-space human habitat beyond low-Earth orbit (LEO), building upon years of hard-won experience with the International Space Station (ISS). These systems would enable multiple achievements for science and human space flight. Most were intended to be deployed using available or near-future capabilities within about a decade after funding begins and serve as the first major human "stepping stone" beyond LEO. Last year, Thronson and Talay summarized work up to that time on expandable or inflatable concepts for deployment at an Earth-Moon (E-M) L1 or L2 location. Here we summarize our team's more recent work both on a long-duration human habitat that could be deployed beyond LEO within a decade and on the priority goals that such a habitat might accomplish. Particulars of this and other concepts for human operations in cis-lunar space are posted on the web and will be presented at professional conferences, and detailed in future publications by our group.
Document ID
20110007989
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Preprint (Draft being sent to journal)
Authors
Thronson, Harley
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Lester, Dan
(Texas Univ. TX, United States)
Talay, Ted
(Frassanito (John) and Associates, Inc. Houston, TX, United States)
Date Acquired
August 25, 2013
Publication Date
December 1, 2010
Subject Category
Spacecraft Design, Testing And Performance
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.
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