MELBOURNE, Fla. — NASA awarded its first contract Thursday to build the lunar Gateway, its proposal for an orbiting outpost around the moon.

In a news conference at Florida Tech, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced that Maxar Technologies of Colorado will build the first segment of Gateway, a solar electric propulsion spacecraft that will serve as a communications relay and mobile command module.

Gateway will orbit the moon much like how the International Space Station orbits Earth.

NASA is targeting a 2022 launch of the power and propulsion element aboard a commercial rocket.

It is all a part of the Trump administration's goal to send humans back to the Moon by 2024 and a sustained human presence by 2028.

The contract carries a maximum value of $375 million.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump announced a proposed $1.6 billion boost to NASA to help speed up this new goal.

NASA plans to launch astronauts on Orion and the Space Launch System rocket from the Kennedy Space Center. Once in lunar orbit, Orion will attach to Gateway. From there, astronauts will use a lunar lander spacecraft to touch down on the surface of the moon.

"We're going to have an operation where we're going to be sending humans to the Moon every year, in a sustainable architecture that all of America can be proud of," Bridenstine said earlier this month.

The big wrinkle for NASA's plan to return to the moon so far has been Congress, which so far has been lukewarm on the idea and they control NASA's purse strings.