US lawmakers say NASA should delay ISS flight

US lawmakers say NASA should delay ISS flight

By Meghan Bartels Edited by Claire Cameron

NASA may soon struggle to expand America’s presence in low-Earth orbit, thanks to a key Senate committee that wants the space agency to extend the life of the International Space Station (ISS) beyond its current retirement date. If enacted into law, the move would have international consequences for human space exploration.

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has added a draft measure to the NASA Authorization Act 2026 that would order the space agency to extend ISS operations through 2032, two years longer than the current plan. The draft measure also prevents NASA from deorbiting the station until a replacement commercial space station is operational.

Perhaps the ugliest truth about human spaceflight is that the ISS is aging and its days are numbered. Construction began in 1998, and humans have maintained a continuous presence at the orbiting outpost since November 2000. But space is a harsh environment, and the longer the giant station remains in orbit, the greater the chance that a catastrophic failure could cause it to fall to Earth.

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read more: It’s almost time to say goodbye to the International Space Station. what happens next?

Currently, NASA and its international partners hope that the ISS will continue to operate until 2030. (The station was designed so that it requires the full attention of both NASA and the Russian space agency; neither party can operate it alone.)

Then the station will be gone: SpaceX is building an upgraded version of its Dragon vehicle to safely deorbit the ISS in 2031. NASA hired SpaceX for this task on a contract worth up to $843 million through June 2024 — a remarkably tight deadline to design and build a specialized vehicle for an operation that must proceed flawlessly or risk raining debris onto Earth’s surface.

At the same time, NASA is also working to support private companies to develop new orbital outposts that it can use to house astronauts and their research in low-Earth orbit. For example, NASA has worked with the now-defunct company Bigelow Aerospace to test an inflatable module, and the agency has hired Axiom Space, which will initially be a module for the ISS but later fly independently as a seed for a new station.

Yet, just as NASA has repeatedly delayed the retirement of the ISS—the station was built to last 15 years—so, too, has the deadline for a future commercial replacement slipped by.

The Senate committee—and particularly its leaders, Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington state—are trying to speed things through the authorization bill. The purpose of Congress is to set NASA’s priorities by approving an annual authorization bill and an appropriations bill that allocates funds, but the former is often neglected; The most recently finalized NASA authorization bill is for 2022. And like all bills, the proposed measure must be approved by the full Senate and House of Representatives and then signed by the President to become law.

But even if the measure never becomes law, it is an important signal about how key legislators think about NASA’s purpose and priorities. The language is harsh. It sets an aggressive timeline for making real progress on establishing commercial space stations: Under the bill, NASA would have to release requirements for such stations within 60 days and proposals within 90 days with final language and enter into contracts with two or more companies within 180 days. And the bill explicitly links the space station retirement program to the successful operation of a commercial replacement by prohibiting controlled deorbits until that time.

NASA and US legislators alike have long been concerned that the inevitable demise of the ISS – whether controlled or not – could deprive the country of the capability for long-duration human spaceflight. Currently, the only other existing space station is China’s Tiangong Station, which was launched in 2021. Ultimately, it doesn’t look like the US is ready to abandon the ISS just yet.

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