NASA is Testing Cygnus Spacecraft Derived Habitat Modules for the Gateway Station
It's hardly a secret NASA is preparing to land astronauts on the Moon. Vice President Pence, whatever you may feel about the current administration, announced NASA has been given the goal of landing astronauts down in the Shackleton Crater at the lunar south pole in 2024. This was moved up by 4 years. The plan prior was for 2028. Whether the sooner date happens or not is in Congress' hands.
The first step in going to the Moon is launching the new spacestation in a near lunar orbit. This spacestation, called Gateway, has been in planning for some time. Gateway is intended to be the bridge point to the lunar surface and the place where the spacecraft intended to send astronauts to Mars will be built. Pieces of the spacecraft will be launched to Gateway. This was originally Gateway's intent. However, with the change of administrations to Trump et al, NASA was retasked to land on the Moon instead.
The Gateway Station will be used for the Moon landings by being a bridge. The Orion spacecraft will launch from Earth to Gateway where it will dock. The astronauts will then transfer to the lunar lander at the station. They will then descend to the lunar surface and conduct their mission there. Once done, they will return to Gateway and return to Earth on the Orion spacecraft.
Currently, NASA has been testing multiple companies' modules for use in the space station. One set of those is from Northrop Grumman and it is derived from their Cygnus spacecraft. The Cygnus spacecraft is used by NASA to resupply the International Space Station. Northrop made the modules larger and designed them to be used for longer periods of time. It should be noted, the chassis of the module itself is actually made in Italy by Thales Alenia Space.
Northrop and its team are not the only ones working on the habitat modules. There are others being evaluated as well: four other companies have their modules in testing as well.
NASA is planning on launching the first element of the Gateway Station in 2022 on a commercial rocket. The first element will be the propulsion module meant to keep the station in its orbit. The first element will be followed by the European module. The vendor to construct the habitat module will be selected soon even though its launch is still several years out.
More information:
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2019/05/ngis-nasa-test-cygnus-derived-lunar-gateway-habitat/