“Gateway” is the name of the new International Space Station. Its contruction will begin in 2024, it will be built into lunar orbit and will become the outpost for lunar operations as well as the last border for space exploration.

The astronauts will live inside the Gatway up to 6 months to carry out different activities, to get ready to move to the lunar base or for future space flights to Mars.

This leads to new needs asthe one of managing differently the life on board and the living spaces that the astronauts are going to share. Like in every office, apartment or common space, a sufficent level of comfort is essential to guarantee the right quality of life.

To study, project and realize this new space houses, different companies have been engaged and grouped in a cluster, for the development of primary and secondary infrastructures. Only companies which own flight approved materials have been selected, including Sabelt.

In fact, both retention systems and foams, vastly used for cargo operations and produced by Sabelt, have been proved to be effective for the development of living space solutions. Especially, it has been possible to present a new concept about the astronauts rooms, namely Crew Quarter.

The project has been developed around the goal to optimize the limited available space, to make daytime activities, and particularly the relaxing and sleeping moments, very comfortable.

The outcome has been the realization of mini foldable apartments prototypes which can be assembled on the evening to spent the night-time in a personal and intimate habitat and folded in the morning to use all of the available space for working activities.

The walls are made of expanded polypropylene, light but solid, a good thermal and acoustic insulation already supplied by Sabelt for flooring the cargo spacecraft. In addition, panels are coated with fireproof Nomex allowing a better flammability performances.

That’s how Sabelt, together with other innovative companies, makes possible a further step towards the space exploration and the future.