Trump Administration Plans To Privatize International Space Station

MIT astronautics professor Dava Newman, who was the deputy NASA chief under Barack Obama, called the space station “the cornerstone of space exploration today” but said the Trump administration’s proposal makes sense because it is doing long-term planning.

The resupply mission will be the first of six, as the company won the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) 2 contract in 2016 to transport cargo to and from the ISS. It could hand over control to a private company so that the ISS can continue its operations.

The $19.9 billion spending plan for 2019, up about $400 million from this year, seeks to refocus human exploration on the moon and shift responsibility for low Earth orbit missions to industry or worldwide partners.

Thanks to the ISS, we’ve come to learn, for instance, that microgravity causes significant changes in the human body and biology. “Otherwise, entities would need to build new hardware and get it to orbit all over again”, Axiom Space CEO Michael Suffredini told CNBC.

Those options ranged from continuing the ISS “as is” beyond 2024 to deorbiting the entire station, as well as options to operate the station as a public-private partnership or transfer parts of the station to a private platform.

The aborted launch touches a sensitive issue in Russian Federation after multiple failed launch attempts over the a year ago, and in light of Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s launch of a heavy-lift rocket ahead of Roscosmos.

SpaceX and Boeing, meanwhile, are developing crew capsules to fly astronauts to and from the space station within the next year.

The space station is a joint effort between several space agencies from around the world. Its first module is supposed to launch in late 2020, built by that built the ISS.

However, with the future of the ISS in question over the next decade, he said the field is “open to interesting and innovative approaches for how to continue to make best use of this very expensive and quite extraordinary orbiting laboratory”.

Retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly tweeted that cutting ISS funding would be “a step backward for our space agency”. “There are agreements in place with nearly 30 other nations for the space station”. “For us, it’s really that we want to see that ultimate return to the American taxpayer, and any sort of artificial cut-off day as opposed to a natural transition would likely dampen that ability”. The agency spends between $3 and $4 billion on the space lab every year, and that’s money it can’t put toward, say, sending humans to the moon or to Mars. Now low Earth operations are handled by the likes of SpaceX, Blue Origins and Orbital ATK.

What to do with the orbiting station has been a huge question within the US government for years.

“I think all of us are open to reasonable proposals that are cost-effective and that are utilizing the investments we’ve made in a way that maximizes their effectiveness”, he said.

Nasa is now studying whether the life of the station could be extended to 2028, or beyond, and he said any decision should hinge on that report.