“I believe it’s a $1 trillion industry, especially when you start manufacturing things in space,” says Matt Ondler, Axiom’s chief technology officer. Add the other three companies now under NASA contract, and there could be at least four private space stations orbiting Earth before the end of the decade. The first module is set to launch in September 2024, with the other three following at nine-month intervals. NASA previously inked a deal with Houston-based Axiom Space under which the company will launch up to four modules to dock with the ISS, which will later decouple and become their own free-flying space station before the ISS is de-orbited and retired. companies to develop the space destinations where people can visit, live, and work.”īlue Origin, Nanoracks and Northrop Grumman aren’t alone. “With commercial companies now providing transportation to low-Earth orbit, we are partnering with U.S. “Building on our successful initiatives to partner with private industry to deliver to the International Space Station, NASA is once again leading the way to commercialize space activities,” Nelson said in a press statement when the space station contracts were announced. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicle has already gone into service ferrying crews to the ISS, and while Boeing is still struggling with technical issues and has yet to fly a crew, it is scheduled to make an uncrewed test flight to the ISS in May. The arrangement is similar to the one NASA struck in 2014 with SpaceX and Boeing after the space shuttles retired, contracting with both companies to develop crew vehicles to carry astronauts to low-Earth orbit.
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Instead, the space agency signed a $415.6 million seed money deal with three companies-Blue Origin, Nanoracks, and Northrop Grumman-to develop their own private space stations, on which NASA and other customers could lease space for professional crews and tourists. will be getting out of the space station game, likely for good. 2, 2021, NASA made it clear that when that clock does toll, the U.S. But whatever its exact end date is, the station is on the clock. In December, the Biden Administration extended its life to 2030-provided the hardware can last that long. NASA and the ISS partners had originally intended to keep the station in service only until 2025, when it would be sent on an incineration plunge through the atmosphere and into the ocean. Its first component, the Russian Zarya (Dawn) module, was launched nearly 24 years ago, and orbital hardware can last only so long before equipment breaks down, small air leaks appear, and the constant punishment both by micrometeorites and the continual thermal cycling the station goes through on every 90-minute orbit-from 121 degrees C (250 degrees F) on the sunlit side of the Earth and -157 degrees C (-250 degrees F) on the nighttime side-take their own toll. The $150 billion ISS-as big as a football field and made of 16 pressurized modules and a pair of massive solar wings-is getting old. This is the cooperation we have going on in the civilian space program.”īut what war can not break, time and age can. “The professional relationship between astronauts and cosmonauts, it hasn’t missed a beat. “Up in space, we can have a cooperation with our Russian friends, our colleagues,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a press statement after Russia’s expanded invasion of Ukraine began and before the crew’s return. and Russia-was always intended to be an exercise in peaceable relations between two nations that fought a decades-long Cold War.
From its inception more than a generation ago, the ISS-which was built and is maintained by 15 nations, led by the U.S.
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