Posted: Dec 1, 2021 08:45 GMT
With this initiative, the agency is anticipating the station’s retirement, which, according to calculations, would arrive in 2024.
NASA has committed to replacing the International Space Station (ISS) with “commercial space destinations” as part of its efforts to commercialize low Earth orbit. To that end, the US Congress, during the last fiscal year that ended on September 30, authorized 17 of the 150 million dollars needed, according to a recent report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG).
With this initiative, the space agency is anticipating the EEI retirement which, according to the calculations, would arrive in 2024, but that term is likely to last until 2030. For more than 20 years, the station has served as a space laboratory, equipment test area and reception site for astronauts. It costs about $ 3 billion a year, which is equivalent to a third of NASA’s annual budget for its manned space flights.
Although the OIG found in its last audit that between 2016 and 2020 the general operating and maintenance costs of the EEI for the United States were around 1.1 billion dollars, the sum continues to grow due to the constant need to update obsolete equipments. In 2020, its renewal amounted to 169 million dollars, an increase of 35% over previous years.
The end of the ISS is inevitable, but NASA needs to maintain its presence in low Earth orbit due to various ongoing investigations for its long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars, which “will not be complete by 2030.” In addition, the microgravity offered by the station and the “hostile space environment” are key to “studying the risks to human health of deep space travel.”
For this reason, its objective is to continue this scientific work in its future commercial facilities, which it aspires “be operational by 2028”. That “would allow a two-year overlap with the ISS before retirement” and is crucial to “avoid a gap in access to Earth orbit,” the agency stresses. At the moment the technical specifications and the names of the manufacturers have not been revealed.
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