At any space station, NASA will be the “anchor tenant,” Mastracchio said. But as the commercial space travel market grows, the station will welcome other visitors, which may include those who come for tourism, sports, entertainment, and advertising. In fact, how the legacy of the ISS forms and which additional modules are prioritized for development may depend on market forces. In fact, that could initially create competition for the limited space available: Astronauts from the US, Europe, Russia, Japan, and Canada may end up scrambling for legroom and space space for experiments to focus on their research while private clients do the same for their activities .
But as the station is built up over time, different types of activities will be spread out through different modules, so no one sleeps in the lab and the tourists just want to enjoy the view and life. living zero-G would not be in the way of astronauts. “The easiest thing to imagine is essentially a dormitory, where all living functions, such as exercising and eating, communicating and sleeping, take place separately from laboratory or laboratory functions. manufacturing capabilities,” said Brent Sherwood, senior vice president of advanced development programs at Blue Origin, at the press conference.
But to get the first stages of a new space station in orbit by the late 2020s, NASA and its commercial partners must cut their jobs. The agency’s Office of Inspector General said: “NASA faces significant challenges in fully implementing its plan to meet its 2028 goal and avoid a gap in the availability of a single fund destination. low Earth direction”. The report, published on November 30, the ISS consumes about a third of NASA’s annual spaceflight budget. It is currently slated to retire in 2024, but agency officials expect that date to be extended to 2030. In the meantime, astronauts will have to watch for cracks and leaked in the hope that the ISS remains safe until new modules start appearing.
These three new contracts are part of NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program. Modules of Axiom Space, designed for research and other applications. These include a settlement module, scheduled to launch in the second half of 2024, and laboratory and observatory modules. They are designed to be docked with the ISS, and when the station stops working, they will detach and become a free-flying commercial station.
Ultimately, NASA’s competition could yield more than one winner, argued Jeffrey Manber, president of Voyager Space’s international and space stations and chairman of the board at Nanoracks. press conference: “By the end of this decade, there will be many privately owned space stations, possibly in different orbits. ”
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