NASA Picks SpaceX To Build ISS Deorbit Vehicle

NASA just awarded a contract to SpaceX to build a vehicle to deorbit the International Space Station at the end of its lifetime, currently planned for 2030. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has been urging Congress to fund such a vehicle for more than a year, but without success so far. With 2030 just six years away, time is getting short.

No single country owns the ISS. It is a partnership among the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and 11 European countries working through the European Space Agency. Canada provided the Canadarm2 robotic manipulator system and the other countries built modules and other equipment like solar arrays. The first modules were launched in 1998 while others, like Russia’s Nauka, were launched much more recently. The ISS has been permanently occupied by international crews rotating on 4-6 month schedules for more than 23 years.

The ISS is the largest space object ever placed into Earth orbit and currently has a mass of about 430 Metric Tons (965,000 pounds). Orbiting at roughly 415 kilometers (260 miles) above the Earth, it must be periodically reboosted to compensate for atmospheric drag.

Russia’s Progress cargo vehicles perform the reboosts and NASA’s original plan was to use three Progresses to deorbit the ISS. Russia’s invasion Ukraine in February 2022 and the dramatically altered geopolitical climate changed all that, however. While Russia continues to participate in the ISS program much as it did before, whether it will still be an ISS partner in 2030 is unclear. At the moment all the partners except Russia have committed to ISS operations until then, but Russia has agreed only until 2028.

NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) has recommended for several years that NASA develop its own deorbit capability and NASA now agrees, but funding is a challenge. NASA requested $180 million for a deorbit vehicle in FY2024, but Congress provided zero as it cut NASA’s budget to meet spending caps set by the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Worried that might happen, Nelson convinced the Biden Administration to include funding in the domestic supplemental appropriations bill sent to Congress at the end of last year, but there has been no action on it so far.

In testimony this spring on the FY2025 request, Nelson pleaded with Congress to provide the money for a U.S. Deorbit Vehicle (USDV). While congressional action on the FY2025 request is just beginning, NASA is taking steps to procure one hoping the money will be available. The FY2025 request is $109 million.

Today NASA awarded SpaceX a $843 million contract to build a USDV. That does not includes launch. A launch contract will be awarded separately.

Although NASA has been using Public-Private Partnerships for many aspects of its human spaceflight program in recent years, this is an exception. NASA will own and operate the USDV, not SpaceX. The vehicle is expected to burn up in the atmosphere along with the rest of the ISS when the time comes.

NASA wants to ensure the ISS is safely deorbited into an unpopulated region of the Pacific Ocean — the South Pacific Uninhabited Area around Point Nemo — instead of making an uncontrolled reentry that could spread debris over populated areas.

The hazards of falling debris became all too apparent when a piece of an ISS battery pallet fell through the roof of a home in Naples, Florida earlier this year. NASA expected all of the battery pallet to disintegrate during reentry, but it did not. No one was injured, but the family is suing NASA for damages.

Critics want NASA to keep the ISS in orbit as a historical landmark or repurpose all or part of it. NASA released a white paper today explaining why it rejected those ideas: “deorbiting the space station at the end of its life is the safest and only viable method to decommission this historic symbol of science, technology, and collaboration.”

NASA’s plan is for commercial space stations to replace the ISS, but if the USDV or commercial space stations are not available by 2030, it sees continued operation of the ISS as the best alternative if the other partners agree, despite its age.