This text was initially printed at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Area.com’s Professional Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
For twenty-four hours a day, seven days per week since November 2000, NASA and its worldwide companions have sustained a continuous human presence in low-Earth orbit, together with not less than one American – a streak that may quickly attain 25 years.
When considered within the historical past of spaceflight, the International Space Station is perhaps one of humanity’s most amazing accomplishments, a shining example of cooperation in space among the many United States, Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia. However all good issues should come to an finish.
In 2030, the Worldwide Area Station will be deorbited: pushed right into a distant space of the Pacific Ocean.
I am an aerospace engineer who has helped construct a variety of {hardware} and experiments for the ISS. As a member of the spaceflight neighborhood for over 30 years and a 17-year member of the NASA neighborhood, it is going to be onerous for me to see the ISS come to an finish.
For the reason that first items of the Worldwide Area Station have been launched in 1998, the station has been home to significant research accomplishments throughout domains that embody supplies science, biotechnology, astronomy and astrophysics, Earth science, combustion and extra.
Astronauts performing analysis contained in the area station and payload experiments connected to the station’s exterior have generated many publications in peer-reviewed science journals. A few of them have advanced our understanding of thunderstorms, led to enhancements in the crystallization processes of key cancer-fighting medicine, detailed how to grow artificial retinas in area, explored the processing of ultrapure optical fibers and defined how to sequence DNA in orbit.
In complete, greater than 4,000 experiments have been carried out aboard the ISS, resulting in more than 4,400 research publications devoted to advancing and bettering life on Earth and serving to forge a path for future area exploration actions.
The ISS has confirmed the worth of conducting analysis within the distinctive atmosphere of spaceflight – which has very low gravity, a vacuum, excessive temperature cycles and radiation – to advance scientists’ understanding of a variety of necessary bodily, chemical and organic processes.
Keeping a presence in orbit
But in the wake of the station’s retirement, NASA and its international partners are not abandoning their outpost in low-Earth orbit. Instead, they are looking for alternatives to continue to take advantage of low Earth orbit’s promise as a unique research laboratory and to extend the continuous, 25-year human presence some 250 miles (402 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface.
In December 2021, NASA announced three awards to assist develop privately owned, commercially operated space stations in low-Earth orbit.
For years, NASA has efficiently despatched provides to the Worldwide Area Station using commercial partners, and the company just lately started related enterprise preparations with SpaceX and Boeing for transporting crew aboard the Dragon and Starliner spacecraft, respectively.
Based mostly on the success of those applications, NASA invested greater than US$400 million to stimulate the development of business area stations and hopefully launch and activate them earlier than the ISS is decommissioned.
Dawn of commercial space stations
In September 2025, NASA issued a draft announcement for Phase 2 partnership proposals for industrial area stations. Corporations which can be chosen will obtain funding to assist vital design evaluations and exhibit stations with 4 individuals in orbit for not less than 30 days.
NASA will then transfer ahead with formal design acceptance and certification to make sure that these stations meet NASA’s stringent security necessities. The result will permit NASA to buy missions and different companies aboard these stations on a industrial foundation – much like how NASA will get cargo and crew to the ISS immediately.
Which of those groups will likely be profitable, and on what timescale, stays to be seen.
Whereas these stations are being constructed, Chinese language astronauts will proceed to dwell and work aboard their Tiangong area station, a three-person, completely crewed facility orbiting roughly 250 miles (402 km) above the Earth’s floor. Consequently, if the ISS’s occupied streak involves an finish, China and Tiangong will take over because the longest regularly inhabited area station in operation: It has been occupied for about 4 years and counting.
In the meantime, enjoy the view
It will be several years before any of these new commercial space stations circle the Earth at around 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour) and several other years earlier than the ISS is deorbited in 2030.
So whilst you have an opportunity, take a look up and benefit from the view. On most nights when the ISS flies over, it’s merely magnificent: a superb blue-white level of sunshine, normally the brightest object within the sky, silently executing a swish arc throughout the sky.
Our ancestors may hardly have imagined that at some point, one of many brightest objects within the night time sky would have been conceived by the human thoughts and constructed by human arms.
