Momentum Rapidly Building for Orion Program - cislunar operations taking shape

NASA is rapidly addressing the daunting issues that face it and international partners as the way to crewed deep space and lunar exploration is opened for the first time since the Apollo missions of the late sixties and early seventies.First,there is the issue of scheduling.The ambition and the will to move forward of the US Government,the EU and the other ISS partners is there now,so solutions are earnestly being drawn up.
1.What to do about the ISS?While the ISS is on the downslope of its service life,with obsolescence coming in 2025,it could possibly be extended to at least 2028 with a public-private partnership to maintain the current setup,or even an intiative to build a new Low Earth Orbit facility or facilities.At the same time,the Orion Program has the solid backing of the Trump administration,so NASA isn't sitting around daydreaming.
2.The first integrated test flight of Orion and the Space Launch System,EM-1,is now planned for a launch sometime between December 2019 and June 2020.Before that,however,is Ascent Abort-2,the final test of the Orion emergency escape system,scheduled for 2019.
3.EM-2,the first crewed Orion mission,which will send humans to a high lunar orbit 40,000 miles above the Moon,the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth,must be held off till 2023 for a very practical reason:the mobile launch platform has to be modified to handle the heavier upgraded propulsion stage in a 33-month process.This is because EM-1 is to be launched with only the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS).
4.The Lunar Orbital Platform - Gateway project,designed as a platform to both prepare for and stage the Orion deep space missions from,and further scientific knowledge of the Earth,Sun and Moon,is planned to begin in 2022 as the power and propulsion system is launched on a separate mission;it was initially to be carried up by EM-2.Scientists have submitted 190 abstracts to NASA on research the LOP-G could carry out,and NASA recently convened a conference of scientists and engineers to scope the possibilities out.
5.Public/private partnerships are pegged as the way to develop both the LOP-G and lunar landing and exploration technologies needed for the scientists' proposals that,besides lunar studies,range from astrophysics and telescope assembly,to heliophysics and Earth science.
The idea is,to make good use of the LOP-G in between the yearly Orion missions of the 2020s and beyond.

First Integrated Piece of Space Launch System Hardware Headed for Cape Canaveral AFS - NASA's new deep space rocket

The Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage,or ICPS,which is the upper stage of the massive Space Launch System deep space rocket,is currently being transported by barge and truck to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station,Florida from Alabama.Its destination is the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Operation Center at the Cape.The ICPS is the first piece of integrated SLS hardware that will arrive at the Cape for final processing and testing before shipment to Ground Systems Development Operations at Kennedy Space Center prior to launch on Exploration Mission-1 in the 2018-19 time frame.At the request of the White House,NASA began a formal feasibility study on 17 February 2017 of making EM-1 the first crewed mission of the Orion spacecraft,moving that goal up from 2021.In a more informal study of the question the agency conducted on its own,NASA concluded it would be technically possible to meld the first crewed mission with the EM-1 shakedown mission of the integrated Orion/SLS.The formal review,with input from the Astronaut Office and a lot of consideration of crew safety,will be ready in about a month.*
Designed and built by Boeing in Huntsville,Alabama and United Launch Alliance,a Boeing/Lockheed Martin partnership,in Decatur,Alabama,the ICPS will propel Orion and 13 secondary payloads of CubeSats (small satellites) to a point beyond the Moon,into deep space.If EM-1 is crewed,NASA says there would likely be two crew members on an 8-9 day mission to cislunar space,in a high orbit around the Moon farther out than humans have gone before,where the goal of reaching the Mars system will be advanced through a series of Orion missions.*
Eventually,the ICPS will be replaced by the more powerful Exploration Upper Stage,or EUS,which will be capable of taking astronauts far beyond the Moon,to the Mars system or elsewhere.
Boeing (BA),Lockheed Martin (LMT)