Artemis Lunar Basecamp

Groundwork

Before sending crew to the moon, the VIPER - the so called 'Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover' - will be sent to the location intended to be used for the basecamp, exploring the area to find potential safety concerns and to get a close-up view of the concentration of ice on the south pole of the moon that could eventually be harvested and used for the crew's life support systems and experiments.

Location

The first mission to return humans to the lunar surface is going to be the Artemis III mission, landing on the lunar south pole. We haven't ever been there and there's not a lot we know about it, but what we do know is that it has ice and other valuable resources that are vital for our basecamp and it's inhabitants.

Transportation

Upon landing on the lunar surface, astronauts need vehicles to move around minerals, ice and other material for the basecamp. To enable this, the NASA has been working on an LTV - a Lunar Terrain Vehicle. Apart from being vital for logistics on the moon and in lunar orbit, the vehicles are also going to be tested on the moon before sending them to Mars with crewed missions.

Additionally to the LTV, a new rover will be set on a mission to explore the surface around the basecamp, in hopes of expanding our knowledge of the Moon and especially it's south pole. It will be pressurized and a bit bigger in size than usually, meaning astronauts will be able to sit inside and control it without the need of a spacesuit - because of the internal pressurization.

Habitats

NASA has conducted ground tests of five full-sized deep space habitat prototypes from different companies within the last couple of years. The goal of these tests and coming up with these prototypes in the first place however wasn't to select one of them to take into lunar orbit but rather to find out potential strength and weaknesses of them and to convey their learnings into their own concept of a deep space habitat. Let's look at some of them!

Northrop Grumman

The prototype developed by Northrop Grumman utilizes their Cygnus spacecraft, which is responsible for delivering supplies to the International Space Station. The Cygnus successfully completed its inaugural journey in 2013 and has already been certified for human spaceflight. Northrop Grumman's habitat mockup aims to create a pleasant and effective living space while also offering various internal configuration options.

Sierra Nevada’s Large Inflatable Fabric Environment

Once in space, Sierra Nevada's Large Inflatable Fabric Environment (LIFE) habitat undergoes a transformation from a compact, deflated state to an expanded configuration. The advantage of inflatable structures, also known as expandables, lies in their ability to offer significantly larger living spaces compared to conventional rigid constructions.

The size of rigid structures is constrained by the payload volume of the launching rocket, whereas inflatables overcome this limitation. The LIFE Prototype, for instance, expands to a diameter of 27 ft, simulating the presence of three floors of living quarters.

The Mission's Goals

The goal of the mission is to learn to spend more time on the moon, conducint life science research and finding ways to mitigate the stress space exploration puts on human bodies. The south pole of the moon is an especially well-though choice of a location due to it's almost constant illumination, making it the easiest place to generate power on our moon.

If we are capable of solving long-term hazards associated with space exploration, we know we are ready to set out for Mars. However, as you might imagine, it's better to test this in an environment where we can get injured astronauts back to Earth in about three days as opposed to an environment where it takes half a year, such as Mars.

Additional Resources

1.
A lot more about the goals and schedule of the Artemis missions can be found on NASA's subpage for it.
2.
If you are interested to know more about the proposed prototypes for deep space habitats or would like to see some more of them, feel free to check them out on NASA's article from 2019.