EUROHAB II: A Lunar Secondary Habitat platform for Space Analogue Mission

The ARTEMIS program was launched by NASA to send astronauts back to the Moon to establish a permanent presence. The ARTEMIS missions will pave the way for the next big step—the launch of the first humans to Mars—by utilizing the Moon.

Unlike the Apollo missions, ARTEMIS missions are targeting the Lunar South Pole because of the Points of Interest such as the presence of water ice in the Permanently Shadowed Regions (PSR) in the craters, Peaks of Eternal Light (PEL) with high solar illumination, and constant contact with Earth.  On the lunar surface, a crew can travel two kilometres on foot, ten kilometres in an unpressurised rover, and twelve kilometres in a pressurised rover from the Human Landing System (HLS). Security reasons dictate these distances, enabling the crew to return to the HLS in an emergency. There is a clear gap between the points of interest and the safe landing spots identified in the frame of the ARTEMIS program.

A Secondary Habitat such as EUROHAB will close the gap between the safe landing spots and the points of interest. EUROHAB is an inflatable, deployable habitat delivered as a payload on a medium-size robotic lander (such as the ESA Argonaut/EL3 or the NYX of The Exploration Company) to the surface of the Moon. If placed strategically on the Lunar surface, EUROHAB not only will act as an outpost or a base camp to extend the range of exploration but also as a safe haven in case of off-nominal scenarios where the crew can take refuge. Additionally, EUROHAB can also serve as a teleoperated science station with experiments running autonomously, a storage place that can be utilized by the next missions, and assist Lunar surface assets like a rover for lunar night survival. 

A full-scale prototype was developed based on a CNES study (named “LISE”) to develop a lunar habitat that can be brought to the Lunar surface by ESA's Argonaut Lander to serve as a secondary habitat for the Artemis missions. EUROHAB II scale one prototype was exhibited at Assemble Nationale, Paris in June 2023. This platform will serve to test subsystems like the Life Support System, Energy Management, Robotics or Communication. EUROHAB could be a French or European contribution to Artemis which also makes use of other ESA elements of lunar logistics like the communication and navigation network MOONLIGHT.

EUROHAB II will be setup in Tignes, France for a five-day simulation mission from 22nd January 2024 to 26th January 2024 to test several aspects related to the mission simulation and system testing. The objective of this mission is to test the system in a harsher analogue environment (high altitude and polar conditions). Also, the team expects to test different internal configurations of such Secondary Habitat. The paper will detail the results of the analogue simulation activity.