The International Space Station (ISS) may be the only space laboratory used to test technology that could one day put humans on Mars, but Nasa has plans to offload it.
The space agency has revealed its intention to hand the ISS over to a private company once its astronauts move out in the mid 2020s.
This means the station, 250 miles above Earth, may continue its role as a remote research lab, instead of being broken up.
Bill Hill, Nasa’s deputy Associate Administrator revealed Nasa’s plans during TechCrunch’s ‘Journey to Mars’ event.
“Ultimately, our desire is to hand the space station over to either a commercial entity or some other commercial capability so that research can continue in low-earth orbit,” he said.
However, he did not share any more details, or whether Nasa’s partner agencies will agree to the plans, as well as if Nasa will build another miniature ISS.
The space agency has previously said it plans to leave research in low earth orbit – an altitude between 99 and 1,200 miles from Earth that includes the ISS – to private space companies, while it focuses on going back to the moon and then onwards to Mars.
Only time will tell if the ISS will be rented out successfully or forced out of orbit, deliberately sunk in the sea, or broken up, which are thought to be the alternatives.
The first section of the ISS was launched in 1998 and now the station is composed of 15 modules costing around $100bn.
Hill’s comments suggest Nasa will not extend its funding for the ISS past 2024, but the space agency is continuing to invest heavily in the international venture.
Nasa’s annual expensesfor station operation and transportation were $3.7 billion in fiscal year 2016.
At the time of writing, Nasa astronauts are completing a space walk to install a new docking adapter to accommodate Boeing and SpaceX ships, which will aim to ferry crew to the ISS in 2017.
While Nasa has not speculated about a successor, the ISS could prove useful to SpaceX, which has already completed nine missions to the space lab and has also set its sites on journeying to Mars one day.
Earlier this week, Sergei Krikalev, the director of humans for Roscosmos, told a Russian newspaper Russia is thinking about reducing the number of cosmonauts aboard the ISS at any one time, in what’s believed to be a cost-cutting exercise.
Roscosmos has suffered budget cuts of 60 per cent and was recently given a 10 year budget of around $20.5 billion (£15.8bn), which is little more than Nasa’s annual budget, The Planetary Society said in a blog post.
The Russian space agency already spends less on maintaining the vast space lab than Nasa, with the Russian media reporting the country plans to splash $4.1bn (£3.1bn) from 2016 to 2025 on maintenance.
While this may sound like a lot, it’s not much more than the Nasa’s annual repairs and transport bill, according to Ars Technica.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
