NASA must delay decreeing ISS, US lawmakers say

NASA must delay decreeing ISS, US lawmakers say

By Meghan Bartels edited by Claire Cameron

NASA may soon seek to bolster America’s presence in low Earth orbit, thanks to a key Senate committee that wants the space agency to extend the life of the International Space Station (ISS) beyond its current retirement date. If made law, the move will have international ramifications for human space exploration.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee has added a draft measure to the NASA Authorization Act of 2026 that would order the space agency to extend ISS operations until 2032, two years longer than planned. The draft measure also prohibits NASA from deorbiting the station until a replacement commercial space station is operational.

Perhaps the ugliest truth about human spaceflight is that the ISS is old and its days are numbered. Construction began in 1998, and humans have maintained a continuous presence on the orbiting outpost since November 2000. But space is a harsh environment, and the longer the massive station remains in orbit, the greater the chance that a catastrophic failure could send it tumbling to Earth.

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READ MORE: It’s almost time to say goodbye to the International Space Station. What happens next?

Right now, NASA and its international partners hope to keep the ISS operating through 2030. (The station was built to require both NASA and the Russian space agency’s full attention; neither side can operate it alone.)

Then the station will die: SpaceX is building a beefed-up version of its Dragon vehicle to safely destroy the ISS in 2031. NASA hired SpaceX for the task in June 2024 on a contract worth up to $843 million—a remarkably tight timeline for designing and building a purpose-built vehicle for an operation that must continue flawlessly or risk raining down on Earth’s surface.

At the same time, NASA has also worked to support private companies to develop new orbital outposts that they can use to house astronauts and their research in low Earth orbit. NASA partnered with the now-defunct company Bigelow Aerospace to test an inflatable module, for example, and the agency has hired Axiom Space to build what will initially be a module for the ISS but will later detach and fly independently as the seed for a new station.

Yet, just as NASA has repeatedly delayed the ISS’s retirement — the station was built to last 15 years — so too have the timelines for future commercial replacements slipped.

The Senate committee — and in particular its leaders, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington State — are trying to move things through the authorization bill. Congress is supposed to approve an annual authorization bill to set NASA’s priorities and an appropriations bill that allocates money, but the former is often neglected; the last completed NASA authorization proposal dates to 2022. And like all bills, the proposed measure must be approved by the full Senate and House of Representatives and then signed by the president to become law.

But even if the measure never becomes law, it is an important signal about how key lawmakers think about NASA’s purpose and priorities. The language is strong. It sets an aggressive timeline for making real progress on establishing commercial space stations: under the bill, NASA would have to release requirements for such stations within 60 days and final language to request proposals within 90 days and must enter into contracts with two or more companies within 180 days. And the bill explicitly links the space station’s retirement plan to the successful operation of a commercial replacement by prohibiting a controlled deorbit until then.

Both NASA and US lawmakers have long worried that the inevitable demise of the ISS – whether controlled or not – could leave the country without the capacity for long-term space travel. For now, the only other existing space station is China’s Tiangong Station, which was launched in 2021. Ultimately, it doesn’t look like the US is ready to give up on the ISS just yet.

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