International Space Station Operations Extended to 2030

Credit: NASA

NASA and the US Biden-Harris Administration have announced that operations of the International Space Station have been extended to 2030. The ISS program was previously planned to end in 2024. Although NASA has made this decision, the other four space agencies (CSA, ESA, JAXA, and Roscosmos) have not made a decision yet. NASA seems to hopeful about the other space agencies doing the same thing since the five stars representing the five space agencies are on the ISS 203o symbol (above). NASA's goals for this final decade of the ISS are to increase the science output even more and to increase commercial participation. In the last decade, companies have been participating more and more in the ISS program. Companies have flown payloads to the ISS and even have added modules (Bigelow with BEAM and Nanoracks with the Bishop payload airlock). Companies have also started crew and cargo missions for NASA. SpaceX has been launching cargo to the ISS since 2012 and now they take astronauts there as well. Since 2013, Northrop Grumman (previously Orbital Sciences and Orbital ATK), has taken cargo to the space station with the Cygnus spacecraft. In this decade, at least two more vehicles will be going to the ISS, Boeing's Starliner with crew and Sierra Space's Dream Chaser with cargo. In addition, Axiom will start doing private astronaut missions with SpaceX's Dragon 2 spacecraft and will build new modules for the ISS. Both NASA and Roscosmos have replacements being developed. NASA is working on the Gateway lunar space station to orbit the moon as part of the Artemis program. They will work with ESA, JAXA, and CSA. In addition to the Gateway, NASA is planning to have their astronauts on commercial space stations in low earth orbit. In the final decade of the ISS, NASA will transition to these space stations. Last year, NASA selected three commercial space stations for this reason. Though not all three might get the contract, at least one of them will be used. The space stations chosen were Blue Origin's Orbital Reef, Nanorack's Starlab, and Northrop Gruman's Free Flyer. Meanwhile, Roscosmos also has plans for their own new space station in Erath orbit, named Russian Orbital Space Station or ROSS. The first module is planned to launch in 2024. You can learn more about space stations in Future Astronaut's space station presentation (below).