The space station turned 25 years old on Wednesday (Dec. 6), and NASA is preparing for the pioneering outpost’s end.
The agency just celebrated the milestone mission that docked the primary two International Space Station (ISS) modules on Dec. 6, 1998. Within the runup to that event, NASA updated its private proposal request to assist deorbit the station when it retires in 2030 or so. And early stage funding is underway for several industrial replacements that will be run by private firms, with NASA as a customer. The agency wants all these vehicles ready by the point the ISS’ work is finished.
Industrial activity will allow more astronauts, from more countries, to “conduct science and technology development,” ISS Expedition 70 commander Andreas Mogensen said during a livestreamed event on Wednesday marking the twenty fifth anniversary.
“I believe that is incredibly exciting, to see what number of countries [will fly], and hopefully also in the long run private firms are all for utilizing a laboratory in low Earth orbit,” said Mogensen, who’s with the European Space Agency.
Related: Track the ISS: How and where to see it
The ISS first got here along with the mating of the Russian Zarya module (launched on a Russian Proton rocket) and the U.S. Unity module (which flew on board space shuttle Endeavour’s STS-88 mission.)
STS-88 commander Bob Cabana, now NASA’s associate administrator, said during Wednesday’s livestream that the station has seen a variety of change since that 1998 flight. “After I left the space station … [it was] pretty spartan and immaculate. It’s sort of collected a variety of stuff over time.”
The ISS has also collected modules from NASA, Russia, Europe and Japan, not to say Canadian robotics. This system’s partners are also pivoting harder into industrial ventures. After years of ISS private experiments manifested via the corporate Nanoracks, industrial astronauts are step by step coming on board, too, with missions organized by Houston company Axiom Space. Cargo deliveries from the U.S. also come privately now, via SpaceX and Northrop Grumman, while Russia continues to send government-funded Progress spacecraft.
Human flights have also modified so much. Axiom Space and U.S.-led crews all come on board via SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Boeing’s Starliner should follow in 2024, after several years of delay. The 2 U.S. space shuttle alternative vehicles are usually not the one human spacecraft, either, as Russian Soyuz spacecraft proceed to send Russian-led crews aloft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
It can take several years to soundly plan for the top of the ISS, which is why NASA is working on replacements now — alongside the envisioned deorbit vehicle. The updated request for proposal released on Tuesday (Dec. 5) changes the costing structure and likewise extends the deadline for proposals to Feb. 12, 2024 from the last deadline of Nov. 17, 2023. (Agency officials didn’t say within the press release why the extension was made.)
Should all go to plan from here, the award can be made no later than June 2024, NASA officials wrote within the update. “As with all development effort of this size, the [deorbit vehicle] will take years to develop, test and certify,” the blog post emphasized.
By the point the ISS meets its end in Earth’s atmosphere, ideally, a minimum of one industrial space station can be up and running. Mogensen mused that future experiments could goal ideas like making human tissue, organ equivalents or fiber optic production. “Those are examples of something that perhaps in the long run, could find industrial points. I believe that is really interesting.”
Participants within the anniversary call represented all the biggest ISS partners. Joel Montalbano, ISS program manager, called in from the bottom alongside Cabana. The Expedition 70 astronaut crew included Mogensen, NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara, Satoshi Furukawa (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Russian cosmonauts Konstantin Borisov, Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub.