Elon Musk's SpaceX has been awarded an USD 843 million NASA contract to develop a US Deorbit Vehicle for safely and responsibly deorbiting the International Space Station (ISS) in 2030, at the end of its operational life. This vehicle will ensure that the space station is safely deorbited, avoiding any risk to populated areas.
“Selecting a US Deorbit Vehicle for the International Space Station will help NASA and its international partners ensure a safe and responsible transition in low Earth orbit at the end of station operations,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
While SpaceX will manufacture the spacecraft for deorbiting, NASA will oversee its entire mission. The spacecraft is expected to destructively break up during re-entry, in addition to visiting the space station.
The ISS has seen astronauts from CSA (Canadian Space Agency), ESA (European Space Agency), JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), and State Space Corporation Roscosmos, since 1998. Each agency was responsible for managing and controlling the hardware it provided.
While the US, Japan, Canada, and the participating countries of ESA have committed to operating the station through 2030, Russia has committed to continued station operations through at least 2028.
The ISS is currently in its 24th year of continuous crewed operations, and more than 3,300 experiments have, to date, been conducted in microgravity.
Meanwhile, NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are currently stranded at the International Space Station (ISS) while engineers work to fix the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, which is supposed to take them back to Earth. Initially planning to spend eight days on the ISS, the astronauts arrived on June 6, but their stay was prolonged due to technical issues.
Now, twenty days later, NASA and Boeing are still working on the return of the Starliner Crew Flight Test spacecraft, which experienced a small helium system leak during its journey.
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