NASA seems to be giving more weight to the concept of establishing manned space stations orbiting the Moon and Mars before attempting the first human landing on Mars in 2035 following a proposal from Orbital ATK for building a cislunar space station.

These space stations will serve as bases for surface exploration and a refuge should disaster strike any landing on Mars by humans.

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Orbital ATK's Space Systems Group is advocating NASA build an orbiting and permanently crewed four-person cislunar habitat no later than 2020. Cislunar refers to the orbit between the Earth and the Moon.

Orbital ATK's proposal will lead to establishing a permanent human presence in lunar orbit by the start of the next decade. It will also result in regularly-scheduled missions for the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion manned spacecraft that are both in development.

Orbital ATK's habitat concept involves pre-positioning a Cygnus-derived module in lunar orbit in 2020 using a commercial launch vehicle. This initial module will be in place ahead of the debut crewed flight of the SLS and Orion on EM-2.

Exploration Mission 2 or EM-2 is scheduled to be the first crewed mission of NASA's Orion and SLS. The mission will restart America's manned exploration of the solar system.

The Cygnus spacecraft is an automated cargo spacecraft developed by Orbital ATK as part of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services developmental program.

Orbital ATK was recently selected by NASA to study an initial version of a cislunar habitat that could evolve over time to a much larger research platform with many of the capabilities required for a human mission to Mars.

"A lunar-orbit habitat will extend America's leadership in space to the cislunar domain," said Frank Culbertson, President of the Orbital ATK's Space Systems Group, before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Space.

"A robust program to build, launch and operate this initial outpost would be built on NASA's and our international partners' experience gained in long-duration human space flight on the International Space Station and would make use of the agency's new Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion deep-space transportation system."

TagsNASA, cislunar, orbital atk, space station, Space Launch System, Exploration Mission 2