Next frontier

Private companies are building prototypes for a planned Deep Space Gateway (DSG)space station to prepare crews and develop equipment for missions deeper into the solar system. NASA, ESA and other agencies are discussing missions to take humans to Mars, and to investigate asteroids distant from Earth. The range of challenges such missions would present are different from sending people into low-Earth orbit and are more arduous than those posed by previous forays into deeper space. One important difference between the ISS and the DSG is that the DSG would not be crewed permanently.