Construction of NASA’s lunar space station will begin soon

The space agency will award its first contract for the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway in early 2019, reports Bloomberg. NASA made the announcement at the Space Symposium conference in Colorado Springs on Thursday. NASA’s first spend for the lunar station will be for power and propulsion elements, which are scheduled to be launched from Earth in 2022. NASA says the completed lunar station itself will be orbiting the moon by 2025 if construction goes as planned. Once in orbit, the lunar station will serve as a “staging” area for moon and deep-space studies. Eventually, however, it will also act as a way station for astronauts traveling to and from Mars.