What Orbital Infrastructure is Required for Moon and Mars Exploration?

Building the Scaffolding

Humanity is once again setting its sights on worlds beyond our own. The dream of walking on the Moon and planting the first footprints on Mars is transitioning from science fiction to concrete mission planning. But getting astronauts to the surface and keeping them safe is only part of the equation. Just as explorers on Earth rely on a network of supply lines, communication towers, and weather forecasts, future deep-space pioneers will depend on a sophisticated array of infrastructure and services operating in orbit above them. This orbital scaffolding is the invisible but essential foundation upon which all surface exploration will be built.

Establishing a sustained human presence on the Moon and later on Mars isn’t about planting a flag and leaving. It’s about creating a permanent foothold for science, discovery, and eventual settlement. This requires a support system that can’t be launched from Earth for every need. Instead, a persistent network of satellites, space stations, and logistical hubs orbiting these celestial bodies will provide the communications, navigation, observation, and logistical support necessary for complex surface operations to succeed. This article explores the critical orbital infrastructure that will be required, why it’s so vital, and the timeline for its development as we venture back to the Moon and onward to Mars.

Why Orbit Matters: The Foundation for Surface Operations

The concept of using orbit as a support base is a cornerstone of modern space exploration. Orbit provides the ultimate high ground, a vantage point from which you can see an entire hemisphere, communicate over vast distances, and serve as a central hub for vehicles arriving from Earth and those descending to the surface. Think of it like a base camp at the foot of Mount Everest. Climbers don’t go from sea level to the summit in a single push; they establish a well-stocked camp where they can acclimate, plan their route, and launch their final ascent. In the same way, orbital infrastructure acts as the base camp for lunar and Martian exploration.

This support system can be broken down into three fundamental pillars, each addressing a unique set of challenges posed by operating on a distant world.

First is Communication and Navigation. On Earth, we take for granted the ability to make a phone call, access the internet, or use GPS to find our way. On the Moon or Mars, these capabilities don’t exist. An orbital network is needed to create a celestial internet and a positioning system, providing a constant lifeline to Earth and allowing astronauts and rovers to communicate with each other and navigate the alien terrain with precision.

Second is Observation and Reconnaissance. Before we send humans, we need to know exactly where to go. Orbiters with powerful cameras and scientific instruments are our scouts. They map the surface in incredible detail, identifying safe landing sites, prospecting for resources like water ice, and monitoring the environment. For Mars, this includes tracking weather patterns like planet-circling dust storms that could threaten surface missions.

Third is Staging, Logistics, and Refueling. Getting to the Moon or Mars is hard; getting back is just as difficult. An orbital station acts as a waystation, a place where crews arriving from the long journey from Earth can transfer to specialized landers for the trip to the surface. It’s also where orbital “gas stations,” or fuel depots, could be located. Refueling spacecraft in orbit rather than launching all the necessary propellant from Earth dramatically changes the economics and capabilities of deep-space missions, enabling larger payloads and more ambitious expeditions.

The Lunar Gateway: A Blueprint for Deep Space

At the heart of the plan for returning to the Moon is the Lunar Gateway, a small space station that will be placed in a unique orbit around the Moon. It’s not a larger version of the International Space Station (ISS). Instead, it’s a minimalist outpost designed specifically for deep space operations. It will be a multinational project led by NASA with key contributions from the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the Canadian Space Agency.

The Gateway will travel in a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), a highly elliptical path that brings it close to one lunar pole before swinging it far out over the other. This special orbit has several advantages. It’s gravitationally stable, requiring minimal fuel to maintain, and it provides an unbroken line of sight to Earth for continuous communication. It also offers excellent access to the lunar polar regions, where scientists believe significant deposits of water ice may be located.

The Gateway’s primary role is to serve as a staging point for missions under the Artemis program. Astronauts will launch from Earth in the Orion spacecraft and journey for several days to the Moon. Instead of going directly to the surface, they’ll dock with the Gateway. There, they can prepare for their descent, transfer to a pre-positioned human landing system, and then travel to the lunar surface. The Gateway will remain in orbit, serving as their command and control center and their safe haven for the return trip to Earth.

Beyond being a transfer point, the Gateway is a valuable scientific platform. It will host instruments to study space weather, astrophysics, and the deep space radiation environment, providing data that’s impossible to gather from within Earth’s protective magnetic field. Crucially, it’s a testbed for Mars. The technologies required for the Gateway, including advanced propulsion systems, life support, and autonomous operations, are the very same technologies we’ll need for the much longer and more complex journey to Mars. Operating the Gateway will give mission planners invaluable experience in managing a deep-space outpost far from home. The first modules are planned for launch in the mid-to-late 2020s, with the station being built up incrementally over subsequent missions.

LunaNet: A GPS and Internet for the Moon

Imagine trying to coordinate a team of geologists, robotic rovers, and a construction crew in a remote desert with no cell service or GPS. That’s the challenge facing lunar explorers. While direct-to-Earth communication is possible when the Earth is in view, it’s not a complete solution. The rugged lunar terrain can block signals between an astronaut and their habitat, and the Moon’s far side is permanently blocked from Earth’s view.

To solve this, NASA is developing an architectural concept called LunaNet. It isn’t a single satellite but a network of interconnected nodes, creating a system that functions like a combination of Earth’s internet and GPS. This “network of networks” will be built up over time, integrating satellites in lunar orbit with assets on the surface.

LunaNet will provide three core services. The first is a robust communications relay. Satellites in lunar orbit will act as cell towers in the sky, relaying data between astronauts, rovers, scientific instruments, habitats, and mission control back on Earth. This ensures that even if an astronaut is on the far side of a crater from their landing site, they can still communicate. It will enable high-definition video streaming, remote operation of robotic systems, and the constant flow of scientific data.

The second service is Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT). A constellation of orbital satellites will broadcast signals that allow receivers on the surface to calculate their exact position, just like GPS on Earth.This is essential for astronaut safety during extravehicular activities (EVAs), for navigating long-range rovers across the landscape, and for precision landing of future spacecraft.

The third function is scientific. The radio signals used by the network can themselves be used as scientific tools to study the Moon’s gravity field with extreme precision or to probe its tenuous atmosphere.

The development of LunaNet will be an evolutionary process. Early Artemis missions will use simpler communication relays. Over time, more satellites will be added by both government agencies and commercial partners. Companies like Nokia are already contracted to develop a 4G/LTE network for the lunar surface, which will eventually integrate into the broader LunaNet architecture. A fully functional, Moon-wide network is expected to mature through the late 2020s and into the 2030s, making widespread and complex surface operations possible.

Eyes in the Sky: Lunar and Martian Reconnaissance Satellites

Before sending humans to an unexplored region, you need a good map. Orbital reconnaissance is the first and most important step in planning any surface mission. For decades, robotic orbiters have been our eyes in the sky, revolutionizing our understanding of the Moon and Mars. Spacecraft like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have provided stunningly detailed images and data, but a sustained human presence will require a more persistent and dedicated network of observation satellites.

A key task for these orbiters is resource prospecting. One of the most significant discoveries of recent years is the presence of water ice in permanently shadowed craters near the lunar poles. Water is a critical resource for human exploration; it can be used for drinking, growing plants, creating breathable air, and can be split into hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket propellant. Future orbiters equipped with advanced spectrometers and ground-penetrating radar will be tasked with mapping these deposits in detail to determine the best places to establish a lunar base. This practice of using local materials is known as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), and it’s a foundational concept for long-term settlement.

These satellites are also essential for safety. They provide the ultra-high-resolution imagery needed to certify landing sites, ensuring they are flat, stable, and free of hazards like large boulders or steep crater rims. Once crews are on the surface, these “eyes in the sky” can monitor their activities, help plan traverse routes for rovers, and watch for environmental dangers.

For Mars, the role of reconnaissance satellites is even more pronounced. Mars has a thin atmosphere and dynamic weather, most notably massive dust storms that can grow to envelop the entire planet.⁸ These storms can blot out the sun for weeks, posing a serious threat to solar-powered systems and surface operations. A dedicated constellation of Martian weather satellites, flying in different orbits to provide a global view, will be needed to monitor the atmosphere, track the formation and evolution of storms, and provide forecasts for astronauts on the ground. These orbiters would also carry instruments to monitor the radiation environment on the surface, another key hazard for human explorers. This orbital infrastructure is an ongoing investment, with new orbiters being added to enhance and eventually replace the aging robotic scouts we rely on today.

The Martian Challenge: Adapting and Expanding Orbital Systems

While the Moon provides an excellent proving ground, Mars presents a much greater set of challenges. The orbital infrastructure required for Mars will be a more advanced and autonomous evolution of the systems developed for the Moon.

The most significant difference is the vast distance. The Moon is, on average, a three-day journey away, allowing for near-real-time communication and control. Mars, on the other hand, is tens of millions of miles away. The round-trip communication time delay can be anywhere from eight to over forty minutes. This delay makes direct, real-time control of robotic systems from Earth impossible and changes the entire dynamic of mission operations. Conversations between Mars and Earth will be more like exchanging emails than having a phone call. This makes a robust orbital communication network at Mars even more important. A “MarsNet” would need to manage data flow autonomously, routing communications between surface assets, orbiters, and the intermittent link back to Earth, ensuring that critical data is never lost.

The Martian atmosphere, though thin, also complicates missions in a way that doesn’t happen on the Moon. It creates weather, as mentioned, but it also affects landings and launches. An expanded network of observation satellites will be needed not just for weather forecasting but for atmospheric density measurements to aid in precision landings.

Finally, the gravity of Mars is stronger than the Moon’s, making it harder to achieve orbit and to descend and ascend from the surface. This makes the logistics of a Mars mission more demanding. A human mission to Mars will likely require a large interplanetary transport vehicle, too massive to be launched from Earth in one piece. This vehicle would be assembled in Earth orbit and would travel to Mars, but it probably wouldn’t land. Instead, it would remain in orbit as a “Mars Base Camp.” From this mothership, crews would use a pre-positioned lander for the descent to the surface and a separate ascent vehicle to return to orbit. This orbital staging post is the logical extension of the Lunar Gateway concept, adapted for the specific demands of a Mars mission. The development of this kind of infrastructure is a longer-term goal, likely for the 2030s and beyond, but the foundational work will begin with the systems we build at the Moon.

Orbital Logistics: The Unsung Hero

Perhaps the least glamorous but most important piece of the orbital puzzle is logistics. This includes orbital “gas stations,” construction platforms, and repair depots. The sheer amount of mass required for human missions, especially to Mars, makes launching everything fully fueled from Earth incredibly inefficient due to the physics of the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. The solution is to launch propellant and hardware separately and handle the assembly and fueling in space.

Orbital fuel depots are a game-changing concept. A spacecraft could launch to low Earth orbit with a minimal fuel load, maximizing its cargo capacity. Once in orbit, it would rendezvous with a pre-launched tanker and take on the propellant needed for its journey to the Moon or Mars. This is the core operational plan for SpaceX’s Starship system, which is designed to be rapidly and fully reusable and is a central part of NASA’sArtemis plans. This capability breaks the tyranny of the rocket equation and opens the door to missions that would otherwise be impossibly large and expensive.

Beyond refueling, in-space assembly will be critical. The ISS is our greatest example of this, having been constructed piece by piece in orbit over many years. A Mars transit vehicle will require a similar approach, with modules for habitation, propulsion, and life support launched separately and assembled in space by astronauts or robotic systems.

This logistical network also includes maintenance. Instead of discarding a multi-billion dollar satellite when it runs out of fuel or a single component fails, future systems will be designed for servicing. Robotic servicing vehicles could rendezvous with satellites to refuel them, replace broken parts, or install upgraded instruments, extending their operational lives and increasing the return on investment. This creates a more sustainable and robust space infrastructure. The development of these logistical capabilities is already underway and will be a major focus of the mid-2020s as new heavy-lift launch vehicles come online.

A Commercial and International Endeavor

Building this vast orbital infrastructure is not a task for any single nation or agency. It will be a global effort, combining the resources of government space agencies with the innovation and speed of the commercial space industry. This public-private partnership model is already well-established.

Programs like NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative are leveraging private companies to deliver scientific instruments and technology demonstrations to the lunar surface. This same model will be used for orbital infrastructure. Commercial companies will likely own and operate communication satellites, fuel depots, and transport services, selling data and services to NASA and other customers. This frees government agencies to focus on the pioneering science and exploration while fostering a vibrant and self-sustaining cislunar economy.

International collaboration is also essential. The Artemis Accords provide a framework of principles for cooperation in the civil exploration and use of outer space. Just as the ISS brought together the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada, the infrastructure for the Moon and Mars will be a product of global partnership. This collaboration not only shares the immense cost and technical challenge but also builds diplomatic ties and ensures that the exploration of space is a peaceful endeavor undertaken for the benefit of all humanity.

Summary

The path to sending humans to the Moon and Mars runs directly through the development of robust orbital infrastructure. This network of systems is not a secondary objective but a fundamental prerequisite for success. It acts as the central nervous system, logistical backbone, and watchful eye for all surface activities. From the Lunar Gateway serving as a deep-space outpost to the LunaNet architecture providing communications and navigation, these orbital assets make exploration safer, more efficient, and more ambitious. The lessons learned and technologies proven in orbit around the Moon will be directly applied to the far greater challenge of Mars. This essential scaffolding in the sky will be built incrementally, beginning in this decade, and will be the product of a powerful collaboration between government agencies, commercial innovators like SpaceX and Blue Origin, and international partners across the globe.