But Bigelow went bankrupt in 2020, and ownership of the module was transferred to NASA this year, perhaps turning BEAM into a reminder of how difficult it is to mix space travel with profit.Ī rendering of a space station project by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, dubbed "Orbital Reef". It was hailed as a monument to commercial potential in outer space. The BEAM module, which primarily served as a test to see how well the inflatable structure would hold up in space, was installed in 2016 by Bigelow Aerospace. The ISS does already have one module - attached to the center spine of the ISS - owned by a private company. Here’s what the end of the ISS could mean for spacefaring businesses, and what this proposed future could look like. It is possible that, regardless of which logos brand the exterior of future space stations in LEO, taxpayer dollars will still be necessary to keep them afloat.īut commercial companies are making big promises, saying they’re eager to lead the way into this new era, which could include orbiting hotels, movie studios, laboratories and manufacturing facilities. Industry experts broadly agree that, regardless of how much fruit these commercialization efforts ultimately bear, NASA and the US government must still keep a presence in low-Earth orbit for science and research reasons as well as political reasons. Costs of spaceflight are coming down, but space travel is still expensive and relatively dangerous. NASA plans to retire the International Space Station by 2031 by crashing it into the Pacific Oceanīut we don’t know just how much of their own money businesses are willing to invest in such endeavors. The International Space Station is pictured from the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour during a fly around of the orbiting lab that took place following its undocking from the Harmony module's space-facing port on Nov. Those projects were all part of NASA’s broader push to foster private investment in spaceflight, hoping that one day the private sector could take over all the activity in low-Earth orbit, or LEO, which is the sphere of outer space directly surrounding our home planet that is currently home to the ISS and the vast majority of our satellites. And SpaceX now owns the only commercial spacecraft in the world currently capable of ferrying astronauts back and forth from the ISS. Several privately owned spacecraft are either flying or under development to service the space station. It will mark the end of an era for a hallmark program that put scientific research and international collaboration at its center.Īnd the space station has also been an early incubator for companies testing the waters for potential business activity in space, serving as the platform for contracts given to a young SpaceX - at a time when the company was nearly bankrupt - and dozens of other startups and corporations. The most recent roadmap for decommissioning the ISS was published this week, and it lays out a plan to bring the space station out of orbit in January 2031, plunging it into a watery grave in a remote area of the Pacific Ocean. All of that makes mapping out the future of low-Earth orbit in a post-ISS world more pressing than ever. Since the earliest days of the International Space Station, NASA has been exploring ways to get the private sector more involved, with the hope of bringing a capitalistic bent to a program that eats up a couple billion dollars worth of taxpayer money each year.īut now the ISS is aging, cracks are appearing in its facade, spaceborne debris is hammering the exterior, and tensions between the United States and its primary ISS partner, Russia, are at all time highs.
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