ISS may stay in orbit beyond 2030, says NASA official

The ISS, orbiting the Earth since 1998, is a joint project of NASA and its Western partners - Canada, Europe, and Japan. They have all agreed to operate the station until 2030. Russia, the other partner, has only committed to 2028, as it plans the station’s future in four-year cycles, according to NASA officials.

NASA has been supporting the development of commercial space stations, or retail low Earth orbit destinations (CLDs), to have one or more of them ready and certified for NASA astronauts by the late 2020s. This would allow a smooth transition from the ISS to the commercial facilities by 2030, followed by the deorbiting of the ISS.

However, Bowersox admitted that the timeline depended on the readiness of the commercial stations and the maturity of the market. He said that NASA did not expect to be the only customer for the commercial stations and that they would have to attract other users as well.

Commercial requirements

NASA’s current requirements for the commercial stations are to have two astronauts at a time on them, less than the ISS. Bowersox said that this was based on what was reasonable and cost-effective for the agency.

He also expressed concern about moving too fast or too slow in the transition process. He said that if NASA had to bear the total cost of the commercial stations for too long or shifted its resources from the ISS too quickly, it could compromise its capabilities and goals.

His remarks came amid industry worries about NASA’s budget and how much funding it would have available to support the CLD effort. Some have privately feared that budget pressures on the agency could reduce funding for CLD and force an extension of the ISS beyond 2030.

NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, at its October 26 public meeting, also raised concerns about the ISS transition. It said that the timeline for developing commercial stations was “very tight” and that there were uncertainties about their business cases that created “programmatic and safety risks with the entire plan for NASA LEO,” as panel member David West put it.

The panel urged NASA to fully fund the development of the United States Deorbit Vehicle (USDV), a project to develop a spacecraft to deorbit the ISS safely. West said that the panel felt strongly that funding the deorbit vehicle was not optional and it could not be delayed.

Bowersox agreed that the USDV was an essential part of the transition to commercial LEO destinations and that it was necessary to fund it “in order to be ready to transition to the new platforms.”

NASA requested $180 million in fiscal year 2024 to start work on the USDV and bid proposals for it in September. The request projected that the USDV would be ready in the late 2020s to deorbit the station, but it also included options that could delay its launch to as late as 2035.