THE US government is planning to wind up its operations on the International Space Station (ISS) with a vision of retiring the orbiting lab by 2030, reports said.
NASA first detailed the plan to decommission the space station activities in December 2021 and reiterated it in the follow-up documents published in 2022.
As per the new document, “The Budget by the United States reflects the upcoming transition to a more cost-effective commercial approach to human activities in space as the space station approaches the end of its life cycle.”
The 2026 US budget request would allocate approximately $18.6 billion to NASA, down from $24.9 billion in fiscal year 2024, with deep cuts to science programs.
The Trump government has made it clear that his government is no longer interested in spending public money that can be utilised for the governance of the people, and also, there is no need to spend billions on a project that people like Musk can offer privately at less cost.
NASA is expected to rely more heavily on the private sector to maintain a US presence in low Earth orbit.
The budget request says the agency will replace the ISS with “commercial space stations,” which will gradually take over operations previously handled by the ageing government-owned facility.
The mission was launched in 1998 as a joint effort involving the United States, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, and other countries.
The project began with the launch of Russia’s Zarya module in November 1998, followed by NASA’s Unity module delivered by the Space Shuttle Endeavour in December that year.
Since then, the space station has hosted dozens of astronauts from several countries, supporting thousands of science experiments.
Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, previously raised doubts about extending ISS operations until 2030.
In July 2022, then-Roscosmos head Yury Borisov announced that Russia would leave the ISS programme after 2024 and begin building its own Russian Orbital Station (ROS).
