The US government wants to operate the international space station ISS until at least 2030 and with the announcement has probably given the outpost of humanity at least six more years. As NASA boss Bill Nelson has now announced, the US space agency wants to work with its partners in Europe (ESA), Japan (JAXA), Canada (CSA) and Russia (Roskosmos) to ensure continued operation. This would support the plans for the manned return to the moon and also prepare the ground for the planned missions to Mars, assured Nelson. How things would go with the ISS in the 2020s was unclear long after the then US President Donald Trump announced in 2018 that he would sell it by 2025.
Ensure uninterrupted presence in space
The NASA announcement now states that the ISS is a “beacon of peaceful international cooperation”. For more than 20 years she has delivered enormous scientific, educational and technical developments that would benefit humanity. Over 3000 experiments by more than 4200 researchers from all over the world were carried out there, and over 110 nations and regions took part. Continuing to operate through 2030 will enable another decade of research while at the same time facilitating the transition to much more private-sector use of near-Earth space. This also ensures that people will be present in space without interruption.
At the beginning of 2018, then US President Donald Trump announced that he wanted to privatize the ISS in just a few years. It was to be handed over to partners in the private sector by 2025, even if it was not even clear at the time how this should work in the light of the nature of the space station as an international joint project. Russia, too, has recently announced that participation will end again and again. For a long time, the country was the only one that people could fly to and pick up from the ISS. Recently there had also been repeated conflicts with Moscow, once the entire station was rotated when a Russian module was docked, and then dangerous debris was created during the Russian test of an anti-satellite missile. China is not involved in the ISS and is currently building its own space station.
Gerst and his two colleagues back on earth
(Image: NASA / Bill Ingalls)
(mho)