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Under its new NASA contract, SpaceX will build what the space
agency called the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle to deorbit the space
station and avoid risks to populated areas, with NASA taking
ownership of the craft and handling the deorbiting operation.
The football field-sized research lab, led primarily by the
United States and Russia, has been continuously staffed with
government astronauts during its some 24 years of operation, but
its aging components have led NASA and its foreign partners to
set 2030 as a planned retirement date.
The U.S., Japan, Canada and the countries under the European
Space Agency have committed to the space station partnership
through 2030, while Russia has agreed to remain a partner
through 2028, the date through which the Russian space agency
Roscosmos believes its hardware can last.
The scientific cooperation aboard the ISS, orbiting some 250
miles above, has survived years of geopolitical strife on Earth,
including Russia's war in Ukraine that has ended nearly all
other cooperative ties with the Western world.
Holding the U.S.-Russian alliance together is largely a
technical interdependency in which Russian thrusters maintain
the station's orbital altitude and U.S. solar arrays keep its
power running.
Those Russian thrusters were originally meant to push the ISS
into Earth's atmosphere at the end of its life. But in recent
years NASA has sought its own deorbit abilities should Russia
bow out of the alliance earlier than planned or become unable to
do the task itself.
The U.S. deorbit plan was accelerated in recent years as the
White House and other government entities pressured NASA to make
contingency plans amid souring relations with Russia.
For after 2030, NASA has been funding early development of
privately built space stations in low-Earth orbit to maintain
U.S. presence in the cosmic region, with Airbus and Jeff Bezos'
Blue Origin involved in those efforts.
Though the market for private space stations is not fully
understood, U.S. officials believe a commercial ISS replacement
is crucial to compete with China's newer space station in
low-Earth orbit.
NASA and China are both racing to the moon. The U.S. space
agency is investing billions of dollars, partnering with several
countries and companies including SpaceX to return the first
humans to the moon since 1972.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Chris Reese and Josie
Kao)
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