ATV-derived Lunar Orbital Station with ESA CSTS

Mission Profile

ATV-derived Lunar Orbital Station with ESA CSTS was a proposed European crewed spaceflight architecture concept from the early 2010s, combining a lunar orbital station derived from ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle hardware with a Crew Space Transportation System (CSTS) crewed vehicle developed jointly with Russia. The ATV heritage would provide the pressurized volume and propulsion of a lunar orbital facility, while CSTS — based on the Soyuz capsule but enlarged — would ferry crews from Earth to the station. Neither the station nor the CSTS vehicle advanced beyond study phase as ESA ultimately invested its deep-space human spaceflight contribution in the Orion Service Module rather than an independent crewed vehicle program.