NASA has said it is ahead of schedule towards the completion of Gateway, a space outpost that would support manned lunar explorations under the Artemis effort, Space News reported Tuesday.

Officials from the space agency talked about progress on Gateway’s first two elements during the American Astronautical Society’s Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium that took place Sept. 11 in Huntsville, Ala. Maxar Technologies is working to develop Gateway’s power and propulsion element that is scheduled for launch in 2022.

Dan Hartman, Gateway program manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, said the agency and Maxar are working to integrate NASA hardware into the PPE. The second element, known as the Habitation and Logistics Outpost or HALO, would help astronauts land on the Moon by 2024.

NASA plans to award a contract to Northrop Grumman for HALO’s completion. He company has already begun the module’s construction, according to Hartman.

The Office of Naval Research is working to develop a cloud platform that would address computing challenges that come the increase of data sources. ONR partnered with the U.S. Navy’s small business innovation research program to create Cloud-to-Edge, a cloud computing environment designed to facilitate big data processing for warfighters, the service branch said Tuesday.

Sailors and marines operating on land, air and sea domains would use CTE to develop combat systems, test software and scale simulations. CTE also supports decision making, assessments and training to boost warfighter readiness.

The cloud platform also builds on the Automated Test and Re-Test system to accelerate the delivery of software-based functions. The Navy demonstrated ATRT’s functions with the Aegis Virtual Twin project, an effort to deploy a virtual version of the Aegis weapon system as a digital counterpart.

Michael Wooten, administrator of the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy, said he intends to expand the practice of data sharing between federal agencies and cloud service providers, FCW reported Tuesday.

Wooten compared each agency to a tenant in a condo data center and cited the lack of association of tenants that could help establish requirements and rules.

“The landlord has a responsibility to keep the condo safe from intrusion, and the tenant should be able to alert other tenants when they see a threat,” he said Tuesday at a FedInsider talk. “We need to clarify the responsibility of each tenant and the landlord for the federal government.”

At a Professional Services Council-hosted event, Wooten outlined his priorities to modernize the federal acquisition process and one is to build on current efforts to leverage the purchasing power through category management.

Chris Campione, the Department of Energy’s chief information officer, has said that operational visibility, delivery improvement, innovation and workforce development will be the department’s priorities for fiscal 2020, Federal News Network reported Tuesday.

Campione told the publication that the department intends to address issues such as data center utilization and operational visibility in the cloud as part of its information technology modernization strategy.

“We have a lot of old data centers,” he said. “So when we talk about data center consolidation, which is a much larger initiative — but the way we look at is how do we get out of some of our old data centers into the cloud?”

Campione assumed the role of DOE CIO in July after serving as the department’s principal deputy CIO.