The days of NASA sending its astronauts to the International Space Station and funding research based private sector journeys to the orbiting laboratory may soon be coming to an end, one of the US space agency’s top officials told an advisory panel earlier this week.
According to Ars Technica and Engadget, William Gerstenmaier, chief of human spaceflight at NASA, said that the agency was “going to get out of ISS as quickly as we can,” and that it would not be working on a successor to the facility astronauts have called home for 15 years.
With the agency shifting its attention primarily to bringing astronauts to cislunar space (putting them in orbit around the moon), it will no longer have the money to fund a low Earth orbit (LEO) space station, Gerstenmaier said. For that reason, NASA has no plans to be involved in the ISS’s successor, and will not fund the current facility beyond 2028 (possibly 2024).
“Whether it gets filled in by the private sector or not,” he added, “NASA’s vision is we’re trying to move out.” Ars Technica called the comments “striking” because “while the remarks reflect NASA’s desire to see US commercial industries thrive in the space around Earth,” they confirm that “it is not the agency’s top priority to ensure that happens.”
Agency hopeful private companies will take over funding
The US has been involved in the ISS since its first component was launched into orbit in 1998, and has relied upon the space station to conduct experiments in biology, physics, astronomy, and other scientific fields. The facility has also been used to test spacecraft systems and equipment to be used on NASA’s planned manned mission to Mars.
During the past decade and a half, NASA has covered transportation costs for private companies conducting research in the station’s microgravity environment. However, with the new focus on putting astronauts in cislunar space, the agency said it can no longer afford to continue doing so and that it hopes private sector companies will step in and help fund an ISS successor.
“The agency’s move to cislunar space doesn’t come as a surprise: NASA has been talking about taking us farther out into space until we reach Mars for a long time,” Engadget explained. “In fact, its new gargantuan rocket (the Space Launch System) could fly to the lunar orbit with four crew members aboard the Orion capsule as soon as 2021.”
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