Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. Senate committee next week will consider extending the planned life of the International Space Station by two years to give companies more time to develop replacements, one of several changes to a NASA bill focused on countering China’s growing space footprint.
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee plans to introduce legislation on March 4 to amend the NASA authorization bill to include an extension to the International Space Station and add requirements for NASA to establish a base on the lunar surface as part of its Artemis program.
The expansion of the International Space Station, which has bipartisan support from Commission Chairman Ted Cruz and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell, is part of the commission’s focus on competing with China as Beijing considers foreign cooperation on its own Tiangong space station and a 2030 manned moon landing.
NASA plans to decommission the International Space Station by 2030 after more than two decades in orbit. The proposed extension sets its decommissioning date to 2032.
The International Space Station has been plagued by small leaks in recent years, which the space agency sees as a sign of its times as the U.S. private sector appears increasingly capable of taking over its role.
NASA is funding early-stage company concepts for commercially focused alternatives, attracting participation from the likes of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Voyager. But some of these companies have made little progress toward deployment by 2030, raising concerns about a gap in U.S. human activity in low-Earth orbit as geopolitical competition intensifies in the field.
The space agency last year commissioned Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build a spacecraft that could attach to the International Space Station and tow it into Earth’s atmosphere for a controlled destruction, but chose not to retain it as an orbital landmark to avoid debris risks and potentially expensive maintenance.
Adding a lunar base requirement to NASA’s authorization would help solidify the agency’s desire to establish a long-term presence on the moon and use this experience as practice for future missions to Mars.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk expressed support for such an architecture earlier this month, having previously advocated a direct approach to space exploration to Mars.
SpaceX is developing its Starship rocket to serve as a lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis program, along with Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander.
In recent months, as China has made progress on its moon plans, NASA has created a competitive atmosphere between the two billionaire-backed space companies to push them to accelerate the development timetable of lunar landers.
(Reporting by Joey Roulet; Editing by Michael Perry)