On the other hand, maybe what comes next is… nothing. Think: mining the moon’s surface for water to create rocket refueling stations, or establishing lunar colonies.Īnd space tourism? Sure, “if you get the price down,” according to Logsdon. The more tenuous promise of the private industry’s entrance into space lies in putting humans in space, “extending capitalism up to the moon” and creating a so-called cislunar economy, said Dreier. “Those are the things that have existing markets.” “The most commercializable aspects of space are the stuff that allows us to turn back inwards on ourselves, taking pictures of our own planet, talking to ourselves, connecting to each other,” he told The Daily Beast, referencing efforts from companies including SpaceX and Amazon to deploy tens of thousands of small satellites for global high speed internet. Outside NASA’s official business, Casey Dreier, a space policy expert at The Planetary Society, expects the first significant commercial pursuits will be in Earth observation-monitoring the globe for sellable data on things like deforestation, climate change, land use, human migration, natural disasters and war. After that, the agency will use CLDs as proving grounds for biological experiments and new technologies.
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NASA via Getty Let's Get Down to Businessįor NASA, the next decade will be the space station’s “most productive,” as astronauts learn more about how to sustain life in low-Earth orbit and beyond-research imperatives to enable future missions to the moon and Mars. In late 2021, NASA awarded $130 million to Blue Origin, $160 million to Nanoracks, and $125.6 million to Northrop Grumman to help fund the design of three more private space stations over the next four years. When the station is decommissioned, Axiom’s module will separate to become the first free-flying commercial space destination in history.Īnd the agency isn’t simply putting its eggs all in this one basket. In 2024, it will attach its own module to the ISS. Next month Houston’s Axiom Space will launch the first civilian mission to the ISS. “By the early 2030s, NASA plans to purchase crew time for at least two-and possibly more-NASA crewmembers per year aboard commercial CLDs to continue basic microgravity research, applied biomedical research, and ongoing exploration technology development and human research.” “NASA envisions a bright future for the LEO economy,” reads the January 2022 International Space Station Transition Report. It will maintain a foothold at the threshold of outer space without having to foot the whole bill. The agency will become a customer-optimistically, one of many-that rents space, time, and equipment from landlords of commercial LEO destinations, or CLDs. NASA is promoting a new era of commercialization in LEO. “It’s the next chapter in humans utilizing space.” It turned low-Earth orbit over to the private sector for development,” John Logsdon, a professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, told The Daily Beast. “NASA has publicly said it doesn’t want to do another thing like this. Rather than build its own successor space station, NASA is grooming other companies for American replacements.
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Low-Earth orbit (LEO)-the area about 100 to 1,200 miles above the planet, where the ISS has remained continuously staffed since 2000-is primed for a takeover by the free market. and Russia, built and operated with Japanese, Canadian, and European allies. What comes after will look nothing like the flag-waving, handshaking diplomacy of the multinational research vessel, a post-Cold War olive branch between the U.S.
NASA plans to retire the floating research hub by 2031, nudging it closer and closer to Earth until it splashes into a watery grave in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean, like so many spacecraft before it.
The days of the International Space Station are numbered.
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