The presence of a permanent Low-Earth Orbiting (LEO) successor to the ISS cannot be underestimated. The ISS has been both a valued environment where humans have tested our ability to adapt to an off-world existence. It has served as a micro-gravity environment of inestimable value. In addition, it has been a global project involving many partnering countries. Where else can Russian cosmonauts and American and other nations’ astronauts break bread together?

Lately, the ISS is showing its age. One of the Russian modules has experienced leaks, with astronauts and cosmonauts seeking shelter in their attached spacecraft until the problem was resolved. The ISS cannot go on indefinitely even though some at NASA and in the U.S. government keep talking about extensions. The planned end date of 2030 or 2031, however, should be adhered to, considering it is a decade longer than the original ISS best-before date.

NASA RFP Solicits an ISS Replacement

An industry briefing today will provide background and answer questions about the new request to industry partners for an ISS replacement. NASA has set July 27, 2026 as a deadline date for industry feedback, with the final RFP to appear near the end of August. The response window is tight: 60 days. NASA expects to award the contract next spring.

NASA cannot help itself when it comes to creating acronyms. The new station is referred to in the RFP as the CLD (Commercial LEO Destination). The RFP draft is looking to have a contractor or contractors cover design, build, operations, crew and cargo parameters and transportation to and from the CLD.

What About Commercial Alternatives Already Here or on the Way?

China’s Tiangong, operational since 2022, will still be in orbit when ISS comes to an end in 2030 or 2031. China’s exclusion from the ISS remains a sore point. That doesn’t preclude future collaborations with Russia’s Roscosmos and other national space programs that are not NASA.

Meanwhile, Russian rumblings have suggested separating its modules from the ISS before the end date and refurbishing and adding new capacity to continue a LEO presence.

American and European commercial partners of NASA are also contemplating replacing the ISS. Several projects are already on the go. These include:

• Vast Space, with the first of its habitable modules, Haven-1, to be in LEO in 2028. Vast plans to deploy up to 9 Haven modules by 2032. The company has been very aggressive recently in its announcements and likely will be the first commercial space station in orbit in the next two years.
• Axiom Space, with its Hab-1, has been partnering with NASA and has built a module it plans to attach to the ISS in 2027. Hab-1 could become free-flying as early as 2028 to compete with Vast.
• An Airbus-Northrop Grumman-Nanoracks partnership has plans to launch a single free-flying habitable module called Starlab. Northrop Grumman originally was building its own space station but joined this project in 2023. Starlab could also launch in 2028.
• A Blue Origin, Sierra Space, Boeing, and Redwire partnership has had plans to deploy a station they call Orbital Reef. Project timelines have slipped, with the likelihood of deployment sometime in the early 2030s.

The Agency is encouraging vendors to engage NASA personnel and expertise as they write their responses.

Three questions:

1. Is there capacity in LEO for an ISS successor and four commercial space stations?
2. Is NASA expecting one or more of these commercial LEO project developers to respond to this RFP using their existing platforms with modifications?
3. Will NASA even need to proceed if one or more of these commercial LEO stations launch before the Agency begins the project?

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• Astrobee, the flying robot, navigates the International Space Station (ISS).
• A robot arm with AI shows it can build furniture.
• A six-legged robot has started restoring forests.

Astrobee Robots Get Their Wings

In 2019, Bumble and Honey, two Astrobee robots, first arrived at the ISS. Queen, the third Astrobee, was sent up the same year in a separate supply mission. These three were designed to be free flyers in microgravity. Cube-shaped 32 centimetres (12.5 inches) square, they come with a docking station to recharge onboard batteries that power fans that expel air through nozzles to provide steering. Onboard are navigation and science cameras, a video recorder, LIDAR sensors, an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) containing accelerometers and gyroscopes, vision-based software, three payload bays for experiments, and a robotic arm for grasping.

Bumble, Honey and Queen were designed for autonomous flight aboard the ISS, but until Stanford University’s latest test, the three Astrobees needed the astronauts on board to provide guidance. Stanford researchers developed sequential route-planning software using a machine-learning (ML) model trained to navigate obstacles in the crowded onboard environment of the ISS.

They call the foundational knowledge gained through the training a “warm start,” akin to route planning for road trips. The Stanford team used a testbed at NASA Ames Research Center to perfect the ML software. Once proven, the software was transmitted to the ISS and loaded into an Astrobee. This involved minimal preparation by the onboard crew, who stepped aside to allow a NASA team to relay commands to the Astrobee.

States, Somrita Banerjee, Stanford’s Lead Researcher, “This is the first time AI has been used to help control a robot on the ISS. It shows that robots can move faster and more efficiently without sacrificing safety, which is essential for future missions where humans won’t always be able to guide them.” 

Eighteen different trajectories were tested with the Astrobee, each around a minute in length, demonstrating that it could fly up to 60% faster through the cluttered, tight corridors of the ISS. After the test, NASA declared a Level 5 status for the technology, meaning it was ready for real operational deployment.

For future missions to Mars, or robots servicing satellites or building structures in Deep Space, robot autonomy to perform numerous tasks will be necessary. This Stanford demonstration is the first step to fulfill that future capability.

Robot Uses A “Speech-to-Reality” AI System to Build Furniture

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), researchers are using generative AI to instruct a robot arm to build pieces of furniture in five minutes. Simple voice commands enable the robot arm, which converts spoken prompts such as “make me a chair” into actions.

The robot arm receives spoken input and then constructs the requested object using modular components. So far it has created stools, shelves, chairs, tables and even decorative statues.

Alexander Htet Kyaw, an MIT graduate student, describes the process as “connecting natural language processing, 3D generative AI and robotic assembly.” Working with Neil Gershenfeld, Director of the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, Kyaw used speech recognition tools with a large language model (LLM) and 3D modelling to create digital mesh representations of objects as seen in the image above. The AI processed the different geometric shapes and the number of components needed to make each of the assembled items, and then created an automated path plan and sequence for the robotic arm to execute each build. What Kyaw ended up delivering was an AI robot capable of materializing a finished object within minutes.

Using modular mesh components was like building with Lego blocks. There was no waste. Objects could be assembled and disassembled. For Kyaw, the next step is to get the AI to respond through gesture recognition to tackle new fabrications. His vision is “for people to make physical objects in a fast, accessible and sustainable manner,” akin to the Star Trek replicator.

Six-Legged Robot May Revolutionize Reforestation Projects

A robot named Trovador has been invented by two Portuguese college students, Marta Bernardino and Sebastião Mendonça, to help restore Portugal’s wildfire-damaged forests. Portugal is one of Europe’s most wildfire-affected countries, losing almost 5 million hectares (over 12.3 million acres), or approximately half of its total area, between 1980 and 2023.

The initial design chosen, a hexapod (six-legged), was to create stability and flexibility for navigating steep (slopes up to 45 degrees) and hazardous and burned-out terrain. The design allows for the load distribution of baby saplings while avoiding soil compaction.

The six legs move in coordinated fashion, creating a gait that ensures balance even across rough, uneven and burned ground, where wheeled machines and humans would find difficulty.

An onboard depth camera enables real-time obstacle detection to avoid hazards, while Trovador’s sensors and AI algorithms collect and analyze data on soil conditions, pH, moisture, and health in real time. An onboard drill creates the holes for the saplings while Trovador’s built-in GPS provides for cloud-based route optimization and precise positioning.

Trovador plants at a rate of up to 200 saplings per hour. It is six times cheaper and significantly faster than tree-planting human crews.

Bernardino and Mendonça recently won the National Geographic Slingshot Challenge, a $10,000 prize, and received Europe’s Robotics for Sustainability Award for their invention. Large-scale deployment is planned for 2026.

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He intends to replace it, first by launching Haven-1 in 2026, the world’s first commercial space station, and follow that with Haven-2, a multiple-module system that has endless possibilities in terms of growth and upgrades. Being the first with Haven-1, well ahead of a number of big-name space competitors, will be a significant accomplishment for this space company startup.

Haven-1 will enable human crews to visit and stay for several weeks. VAST is staging its space station development first with a system designed for short and eventually longer stays. Young explains, “On Haven-1, we are learning how to design, build, and operate to human spaceflight safety standards, conduct long-duration spaceflight across its multi-year life span, and prove out and evolve our novel crew habitation systems.”

He provides a specific example describing Haven-1’s environmental control and life support system (ECLSS), which uses a simple open-loop architecture that can support short-duration crew visits while continuing to experiment with closed-loop life support systems to rapidly perfect the technology for Haven-2.

Young notes, “We’ve learned from NASA that closed-loop ECLSS systems are hard. That is why, through our strategy, we will be on a 5th-generation system by the time we fly Haven-2 in support of continuous human presence.”

As Haven-2 gets built, VAST will incorporate the lessons learned from the existing modules in space, adding new features and upgrades. Young describes their journey at VAST as an iterative process that will see a state-of-the-art commercial space station featuring onboard gravity by 2035.

How does the progress VAST is making compare with other commercial space station ventures?

Only one commercial space station candidate is currently vying with VAST to be first to space, but its plans involve ISS integration as a precursor to independent operation. That company is Axiom Space, founded in 2016 and selected by NASA in 2020 to deliver a commercial habitat module to the ISS.

Axiom’s NASA and SpaceX partnerships have led to private missions to the ISS as well as independent flights on Crew Dragon spacecraft. Axiom is also the contractor for new spacesuits for NASA, designed for lunar surface missions under the Artemis Program.

Axiom’s commercial space station has seen its plans undergo changes since the original contract it signed with NASA. Instead of a habitable module delivery, Axiom intends to launch the PPTM (Payload Power Thermal Module) as the first component of what could become a replacement for the ISS after 2030. The PPTM was built in Italy, and it is being tested and completed at Axiom’s Houston, Texas, facilities. The current plan is to launch PPTM with rendezvous and docking with ISS sometime in early 2027, where it will remain for approximately nine months. The next stage will be the first habitat module deployment in early 2028. PPTM will undock from the ISS and link up with the Axiom habitat. Additional habitat module launches will follow.

Starlab is another VAST contender for bragging rights to be the first commercial space station. Starlab is a partnership that first involved Lockheed Martin as a partner with Nanoracks and Voyager Space, two NASA-contracted commercial space companies. Airbus has recently replaced Lockheed Martin with the timelines for Starlab’s operational start now set for sometime in 2028, dependent on SpaceX’s Starship meeting its milestones as a launch vehicle. Like VAST’s Haven-1, Starlab will not need to rely on the ISS for its deployment.

The last contender is Orbital Reef, a project involving a consortium that includes Blue Origin, Sierra Space, Boeing, Redwire Space, Genesis Engineering Solutions, Amazon and Arizona State University. Orbital Reef’s deployment has been dependent on getting Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket to fly. It achieved a major milestone this month with the launch of two spacecraft destined for Mars and a flawless touchdown for its reusable first stage. The coordination of all the players in this consortium and the modular nature of the station’s development and deployment have delayed the project, with full station operations not expected until the early 2030s.

So, there you have it. Note that China’s Tiangong or a future Russian-Chinese station or not part of this article because we chose only to describe ISS commercial space station alternatives. We can look at what the Chinese and Russians are prepared to reveal in a future posting.

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For NASA’s human space flight operations, ISS represents less than half the money currently being spent on the Artemis Program annually. In 2024 that budget is $7.5 billion.

NASA’s other big off-world space line items include the James Webb Space Telescope operations annual cost of $175 million, the Mars Exploration Program with Perseverance operations at $150 million each year, and Curiosity at $62 million.

The other big line item is the NASA Earth Science Program with an annual budget of $2 billion.

The ISS End Date Could Come Sooner Than 2030

The current plan is to extend the ISS to 2030. NASA recently awarded SpaceX a contract to de-orbit the space station sometime in 2031. However, many new concerns suggest the ISS may not last until 2030 let alone see its mission extended into the next decade as some at NASA have proposed.

The ISS was built between 1998 and 2011 and has been continuously occupied since 2000. Today, fewer modules are being added. The core of the station consisting of a Russian and U.S. section is showing its age.

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has documented 50 areas of concern and 4 cracks in its section. The cracks have NASA and Roscosmos agreeing to seal off a segment leaving its hatch open only during critical operations. Roscosmos has its cosmonauts applying sealant and patches but leaks continue with April 2024 seeing the highest amount to date. Extensive patching over the summer has reduced the volume.

The current ISS crew complement is 11 although traditionally, the space station has 7 on board. The Soyuz spacecraft can accommodate 3 in an emergency. Dragon can accommodate up to 7. The capacity based on those two is insufficient to rescue all 11. If Boeing’s Starliner with a capacity for four were available that would cover all crew members. Today, being one short, however, means one member of the current crew in a critical emergency would be left behind like in Andy Weir’s novel, The Martian.

Further complicating an emergency rescue is incompatible space suit designs. American astronauts reaching the ISS riding in a Soyuz use Russian-designed suits. Russians riding on Dragon wear suits designed by SpaceX. Starliner has its Boeing-designed suits. None are interchangeable. Creating interoperability for crew rescue is a need that has yet to be demonstrated when you consider the recent Starliner test flight mission where two astronauts supposed to go home in two weeks on their spacecraft are now stuck on the ISS for more than half a year until they can get the right gear to go home on Dragon.

Another part of the ISS problem is the way it has been built. It has been cobbled together by joining modules sent into orbit. Every joint represents a potential point of failure. The stresses of flight in the near vacuum of space have caused significant wear and tear. Considering that the ISS has operated a decade longer than the original plan, it shouldn’t be a surprise that parts are wearing out and cracks are appearing. In a recent audit, NASA identified 588 parts in need of replacement, most having exceeded their operational lifetimes and many no longer being manufactured.

Russia and the Future of the ISS

Geopolitics is also impacting the ISS. The Russians after invading Ukraine in 2022 threatened to leave the station in 2025 when the country received negative reactions from Western-aligned countries, NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), all ISS partners. Since that first announcement, Russia has extended its departure date to 2028. It has also made several other space announcements including one to build and launch a go-it-alone space station, and another to partner with China on a station.  Other ISS partners remain committed to the 2030 date.

An early Russian departure could cripple ISS. Its propulsion control system is operated by the Russians and is located in their section. The propulsion system affects station reboost to keep it at an optimal altitude. It also provides attitude control for spacecraft docking and debris avoidance maneuvers. NASA tested a reboost contingency in June 2022 using the Cygnus resupply capsule from Northrop Grumman. Dragon capsules could potentially provide ISS propulsion control.

ISS Structural Integrity and Replacement Challenges

The ageing station will continue to require its crews to spend even more time doing maintenance and repairs as the decade continues. Continued structural integrity remains a problem particularly related to the Russian segments. Replacement parts are getting harder to find. Onboard 3D printing could help keep the ISS patched.

The replacement plan involves commercial space stations. NASA has four companies working on space station projects under its Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) Program. Axiom Space, Blue Origin, NanoRacks and Northrop Grumman have received agency money to develop plans for ISS commercial replacements. Getting them from the planning to the built stage will require far more money than the initial seed capital NASA has put into the CLD Program to date. For NASA to avoid a LEO (Low Earth Orbit) gap similar to the one that occurred after the Space Shuttle Program ended, commercial partners will need assurances that the ISS end date is written in stone. Otherwise, the incentive to build a replacement and the fundraising to make it possible will be compromised.

The ISS has never been a for-profit venture. Commercial space station replacements will have to be. That means attracting paying customers including government space agencies and companies to become tenants will be paramount. These stations cannot rely on income from space tourism. They will need anchor tenants.

SpaceX may have plans to replace the ISS using Starships that can become space stations in LEO. This may be a lower-cost option than building and operating commercial alternatives.

The end-of-life timeline for the ISS is getting shorter. The station is showing its age. The risks of keeping it are increasing. NASA and its space agency partners need better contingencies to deal with emergencies and a concrete long-term plan for future activity in LEO. Right now, none of this appears to be in place.

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Ask NASA how much time crews spend weekly on maintenance and you get a variety of answers. In a 2006 report, it said that crew members spent 1.8 hours daily on maintenance. A more recent answer noted that when the ISS is down to a complement of 3 crew members, 100 hours weekly is spent on maintenance. Divide that by 3 and then 7 and you get 4.75 hours daily.

Compare that to 160 hours spent weekly on doing scientific research and you can begin to see that the ISS, without significant refurbishment, will soon be like an old car. Do you continue to maintain it or replace it?

NASA and its ISS partners have faced several choices.

1. Move the ISS to a higher orbit and then mothball it for possible future use while replacing it with commercial station alternatives.
2. Continue to operate it indefinitely at an annual cost of $350 million not including crew exchanges which increase the total cost to $3 billion.
3. Replace parts of the ISS structure that warrant it with commercial and non-commercial modules which would come in at a fraction of the cost of putting a new station in orbit.
4. Deorbiting the ISS.
5. Wait for one or more of the commercial space station projects in design or partially constructed to make it into space before 2030.

The NASA Deorbit Option

NASA is placing its bets on doing the last two options and in response to a deorbiting request for proposal selected SpaceX to do the job for $843 million. That’s right! To destroy the ISS. the U.S. will pay Elon Musk’s company nearly a billion US dollars.

The plan isn’t to use the SpaceX Starship to tow and direct the ISS in its plunge into the Southern Pacific Ocean far away from land. Instead, the commercial space company plans include a modified Dragon spacecraft with more horsepower to get the job done.

The vehicle is called the Dragon USDV. The acronym stands for United States Deorbit Vehicle. It will have an extended chassis or trunk which will carry 600% more propellant and feature 28 more Draco thrusters than the current 18 on Dragon today. The extension will be powered by a solar array and store up to 4 times the energy used for Dragon crew and resupply missions.

A Dragon USDV will launch probably using a Falcon Heavy to get it to the ISS. A Dragon crewed mission will shortly follow. The crew will prepare the station for deorbit and then depart. The ISS orbit will be allowed to degrade naturally until it reaches 330 kilometres (approximately 205 miles) above the Earth. The Dragon USDV will then fire up its thrusters to begin a controlled drop aimed at a 2,000-kilometre (1,200-mile) window in the Pacific. The Dragon USDV and most of the ISS will burn up. Some will stay intact with pieces as big as a car hitting the water.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t get it. Currently, the ISS costs $350 million annually with or without crews. That’s almost $500 million less than the deorbit project cost. Couldn’t the ISS use existing Dragon, Soyuz, Progress and Cygnus resupply and even Boeing Starliner modules to boost it to a higher orbit for mothballing at minimal cost make more sense? Then modules worth saving and other pieces of ISS infrastructure could be cannibalized for future space projects. Even if and when commercial station replacements get built and launched, couldn’t some use pieces of the ISS to speed up completion or enhance their projects?

A Status Check on Current Space Station Projects

Besides China’s current space station, Tiangong, what is the present state of planning for future low-Earth orbit habitats?

Russia Orbital Station (ROS)

The Russians have been significant partners in the ISS. The war in Ukraine, however, has created a falling out between the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, NASA, and the European Space Agency (ESA). Roscosmos, therefore, has other plans, to build and launch a separate station the Russian Orbital Station (ROS).

The plan is to put this new low-Earth orbit station 400 kilometres above the planet in a near-polar orbit which will serve Russia better for surveying its terrain. The first of four modules is to be launched in 2027 subject to having the launch capability. The remainder will follow in staggered launches through to 2033. First crews will occupy the station as early as 2028. ROS is estimated to cost 608.9 billion rubles (USD 6.98 billion).

Does Russia have the means and money to achieve its plan for ROS? Russia has been challenged by a lack of launch capacity. Its Soyuz rockets can handle Soyuz-crewed modules and Progress resupply ships. But building a reliable successor to its Proton heavy-lift rockets has been fraught with challenges. Roscosmos has been working on the Angara A5 heavy-lift rocket for more than a decade. First launched in 2014, it has had three successes and one partial failure.

Then there is Russia’s belated departure date from the ISS. It keeps moving. When originally announced, Russia was to be gone by the end of 2024 or in 2025. Now it appears 2028 is the end date coinciding with the launch of the first ROS module.

Current Status of the Axiom Space Station

I have previously written about Axiom Space in partnership with Thales Alenia. It has always claimed that it will be the first commercial space station operator, albeit it will do this by mating itself to the ISS to start with plans to separate later.

The completion and launch of its first module is scheduled for sometime in 2025. Beyond that, Axiom intends to add three more before the ISS is decommissioned in 2030 to decouple and operate as a destination for future crewed space missions.

The four modules planned include:

• Ax-H1 is on target to be launched in 2026, a dedicated crew quarter with adjoining research and manufacturing facilities.
• Ax-H2 to follow will be an extension of Ax-H1 providing increased capacity.
• Ax-RMF will be a dedicated research and manufacturing laboratory
• Ax-PTM will add extended life support and increased storage and payload capacity to make the Axiom Space Station self-sustaining.

Current Status of Orbital Reef

Orbital Reef is a joint space station project headed up by Blue Origin with Sierra Space, Boeing, Arizona State University, Genesis Engineering Solutions, Amazon Web Services and Supply Chain, and Redwire Space all partners. It is described as the first open-system architectured space station with the first modules to be deployed before 2030 when it will be operational in full as a replacement for the ISS.

The two latest milestones achieved in the designing of Orbital Reef is a successful test of its life support systems by NASA. This has been followed by a successful burst test this last week at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, of the Sierra Space-built LIFE habitat structure where crews will live and work when the station is deployed.

Current Status of Starlab

Starlab is a joint venture involving Voyager Space, Airbus and Northrop Grumman. It will be a continuously crewed space station that has achieved multiple milestones this year. Its target deployment date remains 2027.

Current Status of Haven-1

Haven-1 is Vast Space’s entry into the commercial space station market. The first non-inhabitable module is to be followed by a crew-capable addition offering both micro and lunar artificial gravity environments. Vast has entered into a partnership with SpaceX for the launch of subsequent modules to create what will first be a Starship-class module followed by the Artificial Gravity Station, a space station that eventually will rival the ISS in size. It is designed to rotate around a central docking port.

Last April, Vast announced that the Haven-1 is to be equipped with a Starlink laser terminal to provide Gigabit per second connectivity from it to Earth for future occupants. If all goes well SpaceX will launch the first Haven-1 module on a Falcon9 in 2025.

A Final Word

Are there other commercial space station deployments on the horizon? More than likely there will be as commercial space station operations deploy and begin to turn a profit for companies that use these off-world facilities. We’ve only seen European and American entries in the commercial space so far. I suspect, however, that besides China and Russian national programs and private companies, we will see commercial partners from Japan, South Korea and India’s ISRO joining the space station race in the mid-2030s.

The proof of commercial space station success remains to be seen with the first launches scheduled for next year and several more to be deployed in stages before the end of the decade. Maybe then we can say goodbye to the pioneering station, the ISS that provided proof that humans could make a go of it inhabiting near-Earth space over long periods.

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So what will NASA be doing in near-Earth space beyond 2030? The current plan has it working with commercial partners and purchasing tenancies on their space stations currently in the planning and development stages. NASA will find accommodation on facilities built by Axiom Space, Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, Airbus, and possibly SpaceX.

The Commercial Space Station Parade Begins

Axiom Space, who in the last week revealed new spacesuits for NASA’s Artemis Program, is likely to be the first to market with a current plan to deliver the first of a number of modules to dock with the ISS beginning in 2025. Axiom’s plan is to take advantage and use some of the hardware aboard the ISS in the building of a cost-effective successor station which will become a home for multinational use. The Axiom modules will detach from ISS to become a self-contained free-flying station before 2030.

Blue Origin is the lead partner of a group that includes Boeing, Amazon, and Sierra Space, who are planning to build and operate the Orbital Reef, a commercial station open to all that will be launched by 2027.

Starlab is a partnership between Voyager Space and Airbus with a plan to put a station into orbit by 2028.

Northrop Grumman is the company building the Lunar Gateway station that will circle the Moon to support the Artemis Program. But it also plans to launch a Near-Earth station by 2029.

If these companies deliver, then NASA will have plenty of accommodation options for near-Earth while it turns its focus to the Moon, Mars and other Deep Space projects.

What About SpaceX?

As for NASA’s current principal commercial partner SpaceX, does the latter have plans to build and operate a station in Near-Earth orbit? SpaceX, today, ferries astronauts to the ISS using Falcon 9 rockets and reusable Dragon crew capsules. It also operates a resupply and return-to-Earth service for the station. The company has also been contracted by NASA to use its launch capacity using the Falcon Heavy to deliver the first two modules of the Lunar Gateway beginning sometime in 2024.

Then there is the Starship which may see its first orbital flight in the next few weeks. A modified version of the Starship will be NASA’s first lunar lander designed to ferry astronauts from the Lunar Gateway to the Moon and back. Starship is big by any standard when compared to today’s crew capsules and modules built by NASA, Roscosmos, China, in fact so big it could become a station on its own. And SpaceX has launch and delivery tools to assemble a permanent commercial station in Near-Earth space. Its other option is to work with Axiom Space with which it already has a relationship having delivered the first commercial-crewed missions to the ISS. And SpaceX will provide the launch vehicles for Axiom to deliver its first modules to the ISS.

Russia and China’s Space Station Plans

China has the only other space station circling the Earth at present. But in the future will Russia and China get together on a new project?

The Ukraine war has led to announcements by Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, that have it planning to take its cosmonauts and potentially even some of its modules home in 2024 or shortly thereafter. Since that announcement, the Russians have backtracked and likely will remain beyond that date.

If Russia does leave the ISS it will be to partner with China. Roscosmos doesn’t have the budget or capacity to go it alone in Near-Earth space. The days of Mir and the Soviet Union are long gone. But the current Chinese space station, called Tiangong, could become home for them in the future. A joint project is possible with the current space station serving as the core of an expanded facility. And because ISS prohibited China from the partnership, Tiangong or its successors, tenancies on it won’t likely be offered to NASA.

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In the last month, we learned that the planned end date for ISS was going to be sometime in January 2031. But over the last two days, the messaging from both NASA and Roscosmos has gone from continued cooperation to one fraught with Russian warnings of consequences for any escalation of sanctions that could affect that country’s space program.

Yesterday, Dmitry Rogozin, who heads up Russia’s space agency posted on Twitter a warning that sanctions imposed because of the war in Ukraine could lead to serious space implications. He turned the deorbiting of ISS in these new circumstances into some kind of weapon with these remarks.

“If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled deorbit and fall into the United States or Europe? There is also the option of dropping a 500-ton structure to India and China. Do you want to threaten them with such a prospect?”

In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States announced that economic sanctions imposed would degrade Roscosmos ability to support its space ambitions from launch vehicles to cooperation on the development of new science and human flight missions. The European Union and its space agency, ESA, is likely to go along with US export control measures, and although NASA stated that they didn’t expect civil space cooperation to be impacted by the events in Ukraine, the leader of Roscosmos pointedly made a threat with his statement about dropping the ISS on countries currently imposing sanctions on Russia.

He stated that the ISS doesn’t fly over Russia’s landmass so if deorbited it poses no threat. But it does fly over the US, Europe, China, and India. It is not a friendly statement to make when the Roscosmos leader states, “So all the risks are yours. Are you ready for them?” He continues this line of reasoning regarding countries that could be on the receiving end of a 500-ton object coming down upon them stating, “do you want to threaten them with such a prospect?”

For ESA, the upcoming ExoMars mission, the deployment of the Rosalind Franklin rover on the surface of the Red Planet, expected to launch between September 20th and October 1st this year, could be jeopardized. It was to be launched on a Russian rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The cooperation with Russian scientists and those at ESA has been extensive. But will science transcend geopolitics and war?

Arianespace may also be impacted since it has been using Russia’s Soyuz vehicle for some of its missions launched out of French Guiana. Arianespace has been working on joint ventures with Roscosmos to develop new launchers and satellites.

All of the cooperation gained in the ending of the Cold War may vanish within a short time with human exploration of outer space an early victim. Instead, the fallout with NASA and ESA may see Roscosmos move to closer cooperation with China’s space agency. Since 2017 the Russians and China have had an agreement to develop joint space-based projects. China’s muted response to the invasion of Ukraine with news announcers describing Russia’s “legitimate” concerns about NATO expansion as justification for Russia’s acts, suggests we are coming to the end of what was once a very promising joint effort in outer space. But Rogozin’s remarks threatening an uncontrolled deorbit of the ISS are unconscionable.

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Four companies are currently contracted by NASA to build a replacement for the ISS. The first, Axiom Space, intends to launch a series of modules to be attached to the current space station temporarily. Eventually, these modules will separate from the ISS to go it alone as a privately-operating habitat and platform. The first Axiom module will be joining the ISS as early as 2024. The other three companies, Blue Origin, Nanoracks and Northrop Grumman have been given $415 million in total by NASA to develop their Earth-orbiting habitats and space laboratories.

In its transition plan, NASA describes the current status of the ISS as entering its most productive decade with crew and cargo transportation increasingly the responsibility of commercial companies. In addition, the ISS is doing more with companies in the way of research and development. Onboard today are 20 commercial facilities including a 3D printer, bioprinter, airlock, external materials and Earth observation platform. A reserved docking port is in place for when Axiom begins delivering its modules to attach to the station.

The decision to end the life of the ISS has involved the 15 partnering countries and agencies that have been responsible for its build and maintenance. Since it first took on human crews in 2000, it has been the best example of international cooperation among nations despite the geopolitics of the participating countries. Particularly the two major participants, the United States and Russia, who often don’t see eye-to-eye here on Earth, have enjoyed a very successful partnership. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, is currently completing feasibility studies to ensure that they are on board with the de-orbiting plan just announced in the last week.

So where will NASA astronauts go when the ISS is no more? The Agency plans to purchase births on its successors while the major focus transitions to the Artemis lunar landings and plans to send human crews to Mars and other destinations in the Solar System.

NASA has anticipated that it will take the next three to four years before Blue Origin, Nanoracks, and Northrop Grumman to complete the design of their replacements for the ISS. The Agency will then launch an open competition that may end up giving one or more of these companies, as well as Axiom, additional government money to turn the designs into reality.

The acronym that will replace ISS is CLD which stands for Commercial LEO (Low-Earth-orbit) Destinations. The experience gained from the building of the ISS should serve these companies well as they design their replacement.

When the ISS comes down to Earth, how will this be accomplished without risk to those of us here looking up? The idea is to begin retrograde orbital maneuvers lowering its operational altitude. After a series of these, the station will experience increasing orbital drag from the upper atmosphere. Combining the maneuvers and the effect of the drag will allow for the aligning of the station to a designated target area in an uninhabited area of the South Pacific Ocean. NASA has given the destination a name, Point Nemo. The de-orbit maneuver will require the use of visiting commercial and Russian cargo capsules. The Northrop-Grumman Cygnus and Roscosmos Progress spacecraft are currently the most likely candidates to assist in ending the life of the ISS.

Between now and then the ISS is going to be a busy place. NASA’s agenda includes:

1. Testing of critical technologies for future Deep Space exploration including environmental control and life support systems with ongoing research studying the limits of human endurance in space with the target being the feasibility of a mission to and return from Mars.
2. Earth sciences research on the environment and climate change using onboard and satellite platforms to continue gathering data on CO2, methane and other greenhouse gas emissions, land, ocean, ecosystem and upper atmosphere and near-Earth space dynamics.
3. Taking advantage of the unique microgravity environment to make advancements in medical, pharmaceutical, and material sciences.
4. Providing student outreach programs that give them the means and opportunity to devise and carry out experiments using the microgravity environment.
5. Finding new scientific discoveries by using the suite of onboard instruments to advance knowledge about solar and cosmic particles, dark matter, antimatter, and quantum phenomena.
6. Supporting the development of the CLDs by being a useful testbed for the production and assembly of future components that will make up these orbiting platforms.
7. Continuing to foster international collaboration and participation among the 15 national partners to ensure a long-term human presence in space.
8. Inspiring all of humanity by engaging the public, educators and youth through immersive virtual and actual physical visits to the ISS to foster the beginnings of space tourism and lead to permanent future habitations in low-Earth-orbit and beyond.

Could the ISS last beyond the planned end date? Undoubtedly the cost of maintaining it would mount as the various components age and require retrofit and replacement. Removing it and switching to one or more CLDs could save the Agency as much as $1.3 billion in 2031, escalating to annual savings of $1.8 billion by 2033. This is money that could go elsewhere to fund NASA’s Artemis Moon Program and a future mission to Mars.

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The Soviet Union (later Russia), America, and China have served as the launching point for human exploration of near space. Twelve walked on the Moon with the last mission ending almost fifty years ago. The International Space Station, ISS, a permanently occupied laboratory in low-Earth orbit was formally announced in 1984 with assembly beginning sixteen years later. The first occupants, a crew of three, flew to the ISS in the fall of 2000. It has been continually inhabited ever since with 241 individuals making ISS their temporary home. It took ten years and 30 missions to assemble all of the components at a cost of $150 billion USD. Having passed the two-decade mark, how much longer can the ISS last? The current end-of-mission date is 2024, but that is likely to be extended to 2028 with rigorous maintenance that has become an ongoing exercise for those onboard.

There have been other space stations. The Soviet Union’s MIR, and NASA’s Skylab. And China has also launched modules to serve as temporary space stations, that is, until now with Tiangong, a multi-module orbiting laboratory that received its first crew of three this week. Tiangong will require 12 missions to complete its construction and will be about 20% of the mass of the ISS. The plan is to house a maximum of 6 with missions extending between three and six months. China hopes to have the station completed within 24 months. No timeline on its durability has been announced.

Meanwhile, Russia has suggested that its participation in the ISS may not continue beyond 2024. The country’s space program has announced plans to work with China on a lunar laboratory that would be crewed jointly. The two nations have invited others to join them.

NASA is proceeding with Artemis, its return to the Moon to stay project. The likelihood of achieving the 2024 goal, to land a human crew on the lunar surface, seems increasingly remote. NASA plans to build a space station in near-lunar space. Called the Lunar Gateway, like the ISS, it will be a multinational effort to construct and will be both a service and waystation for missions to the Moon’s surface. The end goal of Artemis is to build a base and what should become the beginnings of a space economy and infrastructure to support permanent human lunar habitation.

A Japanese space exploration and robotics company, ispace, envisions the Moon as the centre of a sustainable space ecosystem focused on developing advanced technology and science to enrich humanity and planet Earth. It sees a permanent human presence on the Moon by 2040 of 1,000 with 10,000 visiting each year. Humans and robots will create the infrastructure that will inevitably lead to further expeditions into Deep Space. A permanent human presence on the Moon will lead to Mars becoming our next destination. And from Mars who knows where we will go from there.

The real action until we establish a lunar infrastructure is going to happen in the near-Earth space where commercial companies intend to operate. They are already displacing national agencies with commercial space taxis and supply runs by SpaceX, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and soon Sierra Nevada. And NASA has opened the competition for commercial operators even further inviting up to four new ones to join in providing near-Earth services to the ISS and other agency operations.

Space tourism is the new frontier with companies like Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, SpaceX and Axiom. Private space travel and hotels to visit in near-Earth orbit are no longer just on the drawing boards. Axiom has plans for a commercial space station to accommodate private astronauts to do research or just enjoy the view of Earth below. The first Axiom modules will be attached to the ISS as early as 2024. It is not clear whether Axiom will separate these segments from the ISS at some point to form the core of an independent commercial station, or if it will build an entirely new one in near-Earth space before the decade is out.

With constellations of satellites being launched by multiple vendors to provide telecommunications services, and with the advent of solar-power satellites beaming energy to our planet’s surface, the near-Earth space will be a crowded place. What an opportunity for waste management companies to expand operations that will decommission and deorbit old satellites, and clean up the thousands of pieces of trash that currently circle the Earth.

As commercial operators get their space legs, extracting resources from space will become a profitable business with lunar and asteroid mining. Harvesting water and Helium 3 make the Moon very attractive to private enterprises. And largely metallic asteroids will be worth more than their weight in gold to businesses looking to harvest platinum, nickel, and other battery metals in demand here on Earth.

Recently the XPrize, the organization that launched the competition to inspire the first commercial operator to fly to the edge of space, described its view of the decades that lie ahead this century as the dawn of a golden era for private space industry. In 50 to 100 years those that follow us will live in the Solar System with Earth still the centre of human existence, but with humanity going interplanetary, and further on, interstellar.

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May 27, 2020 – The singular vision of a serial entrepreneur is now driving the U.S. space program despite what you may think. NASA and even the U.S. military are deferring to SpaceX, the company Elon Musk founded in 2002. Musk has always believed that the key to our species’ survival is multiplanetary, that is, we need to find homes elsewhere in the Solar System and beyond. Why? Because Musk doesn’t want us to go the way of the dinosaurs who experienced a devastating natural event approximately 65 million years ago when an asteroid wiped out terrestrial and marine dinosaurs, leaving only birds as their descendants.

Musk’s company began modestly with a series of test flights of his Falcon rocket model designated number 1. Most of the early flights failed but in 2008 the Falcon 1 placed a payload into low-Earth orbit. The following year the company successfully launched a payload from a paying customer. SpaceX then leaped past the interim numbers to build a much bigger rocket, the Falcon 9, which will today launch two astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a SpaceX-designed capsule that is a far cry from anything NASA ever built. Falcon 9 has been going aloft since 2010 and SpaceX has achieved with it partial reusability since 2015.

The space capsule which SpaceX calls Dragon was first conceived for shipping cargo to the ISS. Version 1.0 was pretty conventional-looking. But Version 2.0 is a leap in development. The first Dragon flew in 2010 and in 2012 made it to the ISS. Even the Dragon was being designed for reusability. Reusability has been the mantra of SpaceX from inception. The idea was to reduce the cost of getting to space and back. NASA, a government agency, had tried partial reusability with the Space Shuttle program but high costs and two loss-of-spacecraft failures ended that program.

SpaceX’s approach to reusability was far simpler and safer than that conceived by NASA. SpaceX placed a barge down-range from its first Falcon 9 reusable flights which saved on fuel and made it possible to adjust the landing target to the rocket’s trajectory whether taking off from California or Florida. It was a simple solution. Later on, with more sophisticated software and extra fuel capacity, Falcon 9 first-stages could turn around and return to base for landings which meant no transportation issues and less downtime between flights.

And now SpaceX is one of three companies chosen for NASA’s Artemis Program, a return of human missions to the Moon with plans to stay. SpaceX’s candidate lunar lander is its Starship, part of a mega-rocket that will be totally reusable and capable of interplanetary travel once all the kinks get resolved. Where NASA sees the Moon as the current goal with Mars a distant 2030s objective, SpaceX sees this next mission objective as a practice run to interplanetary flight later in the decade, a good ten years ahead of the Agency’s timelines.

SpaceX hasn’t made these great leaps forward on its own. The company has enjoyed a relationship with NASA that has cross-fertilized it with technology and experience to advance its program. This afternoon, when Dragon 2.0 carries two astronauts to the ISS, the expertise of NASA will have been passed along to the young SpaceX upstart and the latter may never look back.

The next year should see further clarification in the relationship between the Agency and SpaceX. Will the Space Launch System find itself confined to the dustbin within the next few years as the Starship and other commercial space companies advance technologies and reduce costs to turn humanity into a spacefaring species? And when our species makes its first footfall on Mars will they be riding on a NASA-conceived system, or one devised and built by SpaceX? I am betting on the latter and wondering what this ultimately will mean for the Agency’s role beyond this decade.

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