An early, full-scale mockup of the astronaut accommodations developed for a small space station orbiting the moon has arrived at Space Center Houston to go on public display.
Delivered by flatbed truck and carefully moved inside by forklifts and trolleys on Tuesday (Oct. 6), the two-piece module sometimes only had mere inches of clearance, and that was after Space Center Houston trimmed back tree limbs and tore out a window-lined wall to create a path.
Northrop Grumman donated the "ground prototype" of the cislunar habitat that it built in 2019. The 14.5-foot-wide by 21-foot-long (4.4 by 6.4 meters) module was used by NASA to evaluate the its configuration as compared to other companies' concepts under the second Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships, or NextSTEP-2, solicitation.
