Human spaceflight is readying for its next great step where humans will once again venture beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO). NASA is advocating for a lunar Gateway outpost that orbits the moon and serves as a base for exploration of the moon. Under NASA's leadership, discussion of Gateway as an international effort with multiple space agency partners has continued to advance and solidify. To this end, NASA has undertaken multiple efforts with US industry under the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) to advance architecture and technology readiness for the construction of a lunar Gateway. The Boeing Company is one of several companies participating in the NextSTEP effort to study the Gateway habitat elements and the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE). Under the NextSTEP Habitat effort, Boeing studied the overall Gateway architecture and developed a ground habitat demonstrator. The architecture studies advanced NASA's and Boeing understanding of the design, assembly, and operations of the Gateway vehicle. The habitat demonstrator was built at Marshall Space Flight Center and tested candidate Gateway technologies and operations that support human and robotic lunar exploration. This paper describes the results and current status of the Boeing NextSTEP Habitat efforts. For the Habitat effort, key findings and results will be presented. In particular, the ground testing in the habitat demonstrator will be discussed to highlight particular results of interest and describe the overall layout and capabilities of the demonstrator. In closing, a complete picture of current Gateway efforts, including the recent lander developments, will be presented and the implications of various choices in developing a lunar exploration architecture will be discussed.
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