Faced with the imminent retirement of the International Space Station, NASA is pushing to speed up work on its potential replacements.
By Meghan Bartels edited by Claire Cameron
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NASA is accelerating its plans to succeed the International Space Station (ISS). On Tuesday, agency officials announced that a formal request for information would be opened on March 25, kicking off a race for private space industry players to weigh in on possible future stations.
NASA has long said that it will not build another space station itself. Rather, it intends to support the construction of trading outposts that NASA astronauts could visit while the agency focuses its efforts on destinations further afield in space. But despite numerous space startups aiming to build orbiting habitats, no commercial space station has yet materialized and NASA leaders are losing patience.
Officials said Tuesday the agency is expanding its approach to favoring independent stations by considering proposals to build new orbital outposts directly on the ISS. In this scenario, NASA would procure what it calls a “core module” to attach to the space station and house individual commercial modules.
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LEARN MORE: It’s almost time to say goodbye to the International Space Station. What happens next?
Once docked, these new stations could be tested thoroughly before detaching to fly independently. From there, NASA believes it will be just one of many customers using commercial space stations and will allow the agency to maintain access to low Earth orbit beyond the life of the ISS, which is currently scheduled to end in 2030.
All program winners would likely join existing partners already working with NASA to develop commercial stations. These include Texas-based Axiom Space, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, space industry powerhouse Northrop Grumman and longtime ISS partner Nanoracks.
Time is running out: The ISS is already operating well beyond its expected lifespan, and experts fear an anomaly could send the ISS a huge laboratory falling from the sky uncontrollably. In summer 2024 NASA hired SpaceX has converting its workhorse Dragon capsule into a supercharged vehicle capable of delicately maneuvering the ISS so that it burns up in Earth’s atmosphere.
Meanwhile a Key Congressional committee pushes for two more years of ISS operations in a call to stop the agency from removing the space station before a replacement is operational.
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