Italy's Space Economy ecosystem looks to the Moon

The NASA Artemis program has the ambitious goal to establish a long-term human presence on the Moon. To get this goal, the program need technological contributions from all over the world and, now, Italian Space Agency is going to help with a new concept of lunar outpost. Thales Alenia Space signed a contract with the Italian Space Agency to initiate activities on a lunar habitation module. Named the Multi-Purpose Habitat (MPH), it aims be the first permanent outpost on the Moon.

This new agreement reaffirms Italy’s Space ecosystem central role in crewed and robotic space exploration on the Moon and in deep Space. It also strengthens Thales Alenia Space’s position in lunar exploration, as the company is working on the development of three pressurized modules dedicated to Lunar Gateway.

Confirmation of MPH’s significance came in mid-October with the completion of NASA’s Element Initiation Review, acknowledging the crucial functionalities of the Italian MPH module within the Artemis program’s lunar surface architecture. Artemis’ purpose is to ensure a sustainable human presence on the Moon as a stepping stone for future missions to Mars.

The next challenge, in line with Italian Space Agency’s and NASA’s requirements, will be to complete the Mission Concept Review, expected in the first quarter of 2024. This will be a key milestone to move the project forward to the next phases of critical technology design and development of the module. Life-support solutions, even for short-to-medium durations in the inhospitable lunar environment, demand cutting-edge technologies to provide protection from regolith and survive the cold lunar nights.

In this initial phase, Thales Alenia Space will be tasked with coordinating an industrial consortium of large, small, and medium-sized companies from the national supply chain, to advance the program to its implementation phase. Through module design activities and future collaboration on Italian technological and production capabilities within the Italian Space Economy ecosystem, the main objective remains to deliver a multifunctional habitation module for astronauts, able to interface with other systems and components in the Artemis architecture.