With Trump eyeing space station demise, NASA pushes for commercial replacements

ORLANDO Fla President Donald Trump and his new interim head of NASA Sean Duffy are pushing for a renewed effort to shuffle off the responsibility of running the International Space Station in favor of becoming a customer of a commercial space station provider instead NASA first doled out funds in for several groups to pursue private stations including Blue Origin and Voyager Space while also supporting Axiom Space to add modules to the ISS that would eventually detach to become its own freestanding station But little progress has been made toward realizing a commercial replacement Now NASA has required for updated feedback from American companies as part of a draft Phase Announcement for Partnership Proposals The announcement made earlier this month called on the updates to be submitted by Sept The ISS which will be celebrating years of continuous human presence in November is slated to be decommissioned after but Trump s proposed budget for NASA s fiscal signaled shutting down American help sooner That includes reducing the number of crewed missions each year by stretching out the stays on board beyond six months but also reducing the number of astronauts sent to the station on each mission Instead Trump seeks to refocus all crewed efforts to exploration of the moon and Mars leaving low-Earth orbit to commercial suppliers NASA has led in low Earth orbit for years and counting Now as we prepare for deorbiting the International Space Station in we re calling on our commercial space partners to maintain this historic human presence Duffy explained The American space industry is booming Insight from these innovative companies will be invaluable as we work to chart the next phase of commercial space stations NASA bureaucrats met with companies work on stations on Sept to outline expectations The updated push was to ensure mission continuity affordability and national alignment and to reduce the promising for a gap of a crew-capable platform in low-Earth orbit according to a NASA press release While Trump may have his eyes on the moon and Mars his first NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine warned about any sort of gap in American presence in low-Earth orbit during new testimony at a Senate committee hearing We need to have space stations that can in effect replace the International Space Station When I say that I mean space stations that are fully mission-capable and have a permanent human presence in space he reported He highlighted the technologies that have poured forth including pharmaceutical advancement to treat diseases that have never been treatable before as evidence of why America shouldn t leave this part of space behind Regenerative medicine the ability to print in human tissue to grow in D human tissue All of these capabilities if we don t stay in front of it our greatest competitor China will and our international partners will join them in that effort he disclosed He also noted the work done to advance materials like semiconductors and hypersonic research Microgravity is critical to all of these capabilities and we re at peril if we don t have a fully mission capable system he noted Richard Tribou Orlando Sentinel