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.