Science Friday - What Will Replace The International Space Station?

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

NASA is planning to decommission the International Space Station by the end of 2030. The ISS, which began operations in 2000, is reaching the end of its lifespan and has become costly to maintain. NASA selected SpaceX to construct a vehicle that would “de-orbit” the football field-sized station, pushing it down into the atmosphere where it’ll burn up safely over the Pacific ocean.So what comes next? So far, NASA has awarded contracts to private companies including Axiom Space, Blue Origin, Northrup Grumman, and Starlab to support the research and development for commercial space stations which would help facilitate future research in orbit, among their own space tourism offerings. Next year, NASA will certify one or more of these companies to build at least one space station, where it’ll then become one of many customers to purchase services from the new facilities.Loren Grush, space reporter at Bloomberg News, joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss who’s in the running and how future space stations could differ from the one we know today. She also talks about her recent trip to the headquarters of Vast, one of the companies competing for this contract, to learn more about its cryptocurrency origins and its high-level recruitments from NASA and Apple.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato, here with Flora Lickman. Today on the podcast, why is the International Space Station getting retired? And what will replace it? Just as our various technologies age and start to have issues here on Earth, the International Space Station has also started to show its age over time. I've got good news and bad news for your space fans. Which do you want to hear first? How about the good?

How about the bad? The bad? Okay, NASA's planning to decommission the International Space Station in, what, 2030, which will make it 30 years after it began operations in 2000. Okay, now for some possible good news, the space agency's been anticipating this retirement for quite a while, and it's turning to private companies. Why are we not surprised to build future space station? So who's in the running?

How could next-gen space stations be different from the one we know today? here to help bring us up to speed is Lauren Grush, space reporter at Bloomberg News. He joins us from the studios of member station KUD, KUT, of course, in Austin, Texas. Welcome back to Science Friday. Thanks so much for having me back. Nice to have you. I think some people have vaguely heard that the space station is going away in a few years. Can you give us the exact plans for decommissioning?

Right. So during the Biden administration, the plan was to extend the lifetime. of the ISS, but to give it an end date with the retirement happening at the end of 2030. And so, yeah, at the end of the decade, after 30 years of continuous human presence on the International Space Station, the plan is to take it out of order of it. And I hate to say it, but plunge it into the Earth's atmosphere where it will likely burn up. Wow, it sounds very dramatic. If you want to hear the rest of the drum, our listeners can call us at 877-925-9. 9174-877925-9174. Can any parts of it be saved for people who want to have a piece of it?

I do not believe the plan right now is to do so. I will tell you, though, that it is a very big vehicle, and so parts of it will likely survive when it is plunged through Earth's atmosphere. And so that's why NASA is taking great care to be very delicate and plan out that deorbiting. process. They've given a contract to SpaceX to create a vehicle that will attach itself to the International Space Station and guide it out of orbit so that it is placed over an unhabited area of the ocean. And so if there are any chunks that do survive, it will hopefully not rain down on any populated areas. I'm old enough to have covered the demise of space lab. Yes. In 1979. That was a pretty teary goodbye, if I remember correctly.

You'll have to, I was unfortunately not alive during that time. We'll talk over some coffee. Yeah. Can you talk about the main reasons it's being retired? I mean, is it falling apart? I mean, is it lost its usefulness? What's going on? Sure.

Well, there's still quite a bit of utility that is gained from research on the International Space Station. You know, it's become a really impressive platform for studying the, effects of microgravity on certain materials, on technologies, for deploying small satellites, but most of all for studying how the human body affairs during long-term stays in microgravity. And we've learned quite a bit about, you know, what happens to our various biological systems, thanks to the ISS. But yes, you know, just as, you know, our cars and our various technologies age over time and start to have issues here on Earth, the International Space Station has also started to age and show its age over time. And so while the main reason of the ISS is to perform

research, the inhabitants of the space station have also spent a great deal of time just maintaining it and keeping it up to date. So a lot of the spacewalks that are done by the astronauts in orbit are done to, you know, do repairs on the outside of the space station, to do upgrades, to swap out things like batteries and other technologies to make sure that the ISS keeps functioning. And that takes up a lot of their time and their energy and their resources. It can get expensive over time. And so, yeah, it's just become, you know, as much time as the astronauts spend doing research, they spend, you know, quite a bit of time just making sure it stays up in orbit. Yeah, well, will you now know that there are private companies that are putting satellites up and building spacecraft?

Is it going to be a private company that builds the next space station? Well, that is ultimately what NASA wants. So NASA has been undergoing this really interesting transition period where they've been offloading a lot of the things that they used to be in charge of to the private sector. So a great example of that has been the cargo and crew services that they, used to get to the space station. So, you know, in the past NASA was in charge of launching its astronauts and launching cargo, primarily with the space shuttle to the international space station. But when the space shuttle retired, you know, they turned to private companies to take up that mantle. And so that's why you have SpaceX and Northrop Grumman, who are in charge of sending cargo to the international space station. And then SpaceX and Boeing, obviously we don't have to get into what happened with the latest Boeing vehicle, but SpaceX has been sending crew to the International Space Station. And so in that similar vein, NASA is thinking about transitioning the control of this area, Leo, low Earth orbit, to the private sector. And so they have been

energizing commercial companies to create new platforms and new space stations that could provide some of the same services and a place for astronauts to go just as the ISS has done for decades. Okay, Lauren, here's the question that I have. Why would private companies want to get into this business? Where is the money in this? Well, right now, primarily the money is coming from NASA. So, you know, operating the International Space Station is expensive. Right now, NASA allocates about $3 billion a year to keep it up and running. Now, these next space stations may not be as comprehensive as the ISS. The ISS is like a technological marvel. Not to say that these new space stations will not be, but they will probably start off small and grow over time. But yes, it is a very expensive endeavor.

And so what NASA is trying to do is help with the development funding. So start, you know, give some early contracts to help. help the design and build, and then also have kind of a soft guarantee that once these space stations are complete and are up in orbit, then NASA will serve as kind of an anchor customer. And so that way there's like guaranteed funding and revenue that will be coming in from the federal government while these companies can also find additional revenue streams from things like, you know, other commercial companies or maybe academics who want to send astronauts to their station. Space tourists, for instance, has definitely, you know, been floated,

pun not intended. And then there's also been talk of other countries. You know, there are other nations throughout the world who haven't always had the option to send astronauts to space. Perhaps they would want to pay to send their own, you know, members of their country to these space stations. Speaking of other countries, doesn't China, isn't China building a space station? China has a space station in orbit at the moment. So what's their philosophy? How's that different? Well, it's, you know, that is kind of a concern that has been used as to why we need to maintain our presence in low Earth orbit because China does have its own space station. And, you know, if we don't have one, you know, let's say there is this concern that, you know, these space

commercial space stations won't be ready in time by the time that the ISS has retired. It's known as the dreaded gap in Leo. And the concern is if we don't make this a priority by getting other commercial space stations up and running, then China will have their own space station that they can use to court other partners. You know, the ISS has the word international in it, right? And so it has been this really great tool for international collaboration. So the concern is that we will lose that tool. A new space race.

Yes, exactly. After the break, what will the next era of NASA look like without the International Space Station? When someone sees $3 billion a year, that could potentially be freed up, get a lot of people perk up and think, okay, well, what else could that money be spent on? Stay with us. All right, let's let me go to the phones to Evan in Pittsburgh. Hi, Evan. Oh, hi. How are you guys doing?

there, go ahead. Yeah, I have a question, a little unorthodox question, perhaps, but when they've made a bad decision to tear down the University of Pittsburgh's football stadium, I was fortunate enough to get a piece of it and it's hanging on my wall. Any thoughts that they're going to maybe auction some of the pieces of? Fund some future scientists going to college with the proceeds? Yeah. I'm not aware of any of that.

I'm sure there will probably be some, you know, attempts to save some of the pieces. I mean, we paid for it, right? Yeah, sure. But I do know that NASA, you know, NASA takes great pains not to, it doesn't profit, you know, off of any of what it does, or at least tries not to seem to be profiting off of any of its programs. So I don't know about that. But, hey, I'm not involved in those discussions. So maybe give your representative a call or maybe give NASA a call and offer that as a, as a, as a, as a, you know, as a. an opinion. Lauren, you visited the headquarters of one of these companies that's competing for this

contract to build, you know, the next space station or begin that process. Tell me about VAST. What makes them stand out? Yeah. So VAST is a really interesting company. They kind of burst onto the scene very recently. They were formed just in 2021. And they are, they were founded by a cryptocurrency billionaire, Jed McHaleb, and they came onto the scene with a really ambitious timeline, which is they were going to put the world's first commercial space station into orbit as soon as 2025. Now, they've since changed that timeline. Now, it's next year. But that definitely caught a lot of people's attention because they were such a relatively new company, and they were promising this really big, bold endeavor. But I think what also makes them interesting is the fact that they do have this

billionaire founder who has been open about the fact that he is willing to put in up to a billion dollars of his own net worth to help with this initial startup money to get the design and the construction of the space station going so that they have you know when it comes to these space startups having a lot of upfront capital is key right you know they're having the right people hiring the right people too yes exactly having the people that um that can build and come up with the design. And so that's what caught us to take notice. And then now we did go visit and they were very clear that they are very interested in this NASA program that we've been talking about. NASA is supposed to give out final contracts for this program to replace the International

Space Station sometime next year. And they are very much banking on winning those contracts. They've said as much to us. But still, the fact that they are able to kind of fill that time before those contracts awards are made with this money is, I think, something to take notice of. One of the great features of science fiction films about space stations and out in space is artificial gravity, right? Yeah. 2001 Space Odyssey all the way. They're running a track. Any of these new things, have any of these new gadget ideas come up for the next space station? That is kind of the long-term stretch goal of VAST. They also, not only did they, um, have everyone stand up and take notice when they announced their timeline, but they also announced

that they were eventually planning to pursue artificial gravity, which you might have, yeah, you might have seen stuff like that in science fiction where there are these massive rotating modules and they are supposed to use intrafusal force to simulate what gravity feels like here on Earth. And kind of the goal is that, you know, if we are able to kind of bring gravity with us into space, perhaps we won't suffer a lot of these long-term health benefits that we have found to be an issue when we send humans into microgravity. Let's go to Steve in Oregon. Hi, Steve.

Hi. My question, do you have to bring the old space station down? It costs a lot of money to get all that mass up there, and it could be used as a material, a material resource. It could be like an emergency place to go for people if there is some kind of disaster with the new space station or anything else. I mean,

why just let it burn up in the atmosphere? It doesn't seem to me that if you just like mothball it, it would really be hurt in anything. It's like having an outpost to the Antarctic or something. Yeah, good question, Steve. That is a great question, and you've touched on a very fiery debate that I think a lot of people have within the space

community, there are some that think it's much too premature to bring the international space station down just yet. You know, obviously it is requiring a lot of updates and maintenance, but I think there's a large contingent of folks within the industry who think that, you know, it might be too early. We can still get quite a bit of utility out of it. So the issue, of course, is the money that is involved with, I think I mentioned earlier, it costs about $3 billion. a year to maintain it and to operate it. And so with anything that NASA does, there's opportunity costs, right? And so when someone sees $3 billion a year that could potentially be freed up, you know, there's a lot of people perk up and think, okay, well, what else could that money be spent

on? Because NASA's budget has not experienced the intense growth that it did receive during the Apollo era when we sent humans back to the moon. It has to, it has. The budget of NASA has grown for the last decade, but it is starting to shrink for the first time. Also, there's quite a bit of discussion going on in D.C. about cutting costs right now and lowering budgets. So there's quite a few people who are eyeing that $3 billion to say, okay, what else could we use that to spend on, given the fact that we have, you know, used this platform for such an amount of time, you know, all things do come to an end after a while. And so could we potentially free up that funding to use it for deep space exploration or other endeavors that we haven't done yet? I got about 30 seconds left. How much?

When will we see some action or movement or contract on this? Contracts. Well, the contracts have already been given out. Or, I mean, at least when it comes to that de-orbit vehicle I was talking about, that's been given out. So that's on, that is on the way when it comes to contracts, the final contracts for the space station replacement, like I said, expected next year. But again, everything is very volatile at the moment. Well, we'll have you back. We'll have you back. Talk about it. Yeah, we'll have to talk when that happens. All right. It's a date. Lauren Grush, space reporter at Bloomberg News, based in Austin, Texas. That's about all the time we have for now. A lot of people help make this show happen. Dee Petersman. Praise of Gucci. Kathleen Davis. Santiago Flores. I'm Ira Flato. Thanks for listening.