The International Space Station could continue to fly a little longer than we thought.
The orbiting laboratory, which has hosted rotating astronaut crews continuously since November 2000, is currently scheduled to be de-orbited in late 2030. However, a recently advanced NASA authorization bill pushes this retirement back by two years, to September 30, 2032.
Staying ahead of China in human spaceflight is a top priority for the committee and its chairman, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
Last September, for example, the committee held a hearing entitled “There is a bad moon rising,” which emphasized the importance of returning astronauts to the lunar surface with NASA The Artemis program before China can pull off the feat (as the nation plans to do by 2030). But it wasn’t just moon talk.
“This is a pivotal moment for our nation’s space program,” Cruz said at the hearing in September. “America must maintain leadership in low Earth orbit while embarking on a new era of exploration with Artemis.”
And American leadership in LEO is threatened.
China gained a manned foothold in LEO in 2021, when it launched the core module of its Tiangong Space Station. The nation completed construction of the T-shaped, three-module Tiangong in late 2022 and apparently plans to operate it until the mid-2030s.
The US, meanwhile, plans to replace the aging ISS with one or more commercial outposts. NASA has encouraged the development of such stations via its Commercial LEO Destinations program, which has awarded more than 500 million dollars since its establishment in 2021, most of it to Jeff Bezos’ Blue origin and Voyager Technologies, two companies leading the planned Orbital Reef and Starlab respectively space stations.
Other outposts are also in the works. The California startup Vast, for example, just raised $500 million for the planned Haven-2 station. And the Houston company Axiom Space aims to operate its own LEO outpost, which will consist of modules originally launched to, and docked to, the ISS.
The companies behind all of these commercial outposts plan to get them up and running before 2030. But the recently advanced NASA authorization bill suggests the Senate committee is skeptical of its ability to meet that timeline.
In fact, it instructs NASA not to begin phasing out the ISS until a successor is operational.
“When one or more commercial space stations are capable of providing services to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Administrator shall begin the process of an orderly, managed transition of operations from The International Space Station to commercial providers in such a way as to maintain a continuous human presence,” the bill states.
There’s quite a bit more to chew on in the NASA Authorization bill, which was introduced in March 2025. (The version the Senate committee just passed is a revision of the original bill.)
For example, it rejects President Trump’s planned 24% cut in NASA fundingwhich allocates $24.7 billion to NASA for fiscal year 2026 and $25.3 billion for fiscal year 2027. (Trump’s budget request allocated only $18.8 billion to NASA for the current year.) The bill also directs NASA to begin building a crewed base at the moonwhich is already a main target of the Artemis programme.
“The lunar base will be capable of long-term habitation, as well as robotic and human-maintained industrial operations to advance science, technology and strategic interests,” it said in a press release issued by the Senate Science Committee on Wednesday.
“A sustained human and robotic presence at the lunar base will support priority scientific investigations that lay the foundation for a successful mission to March“, the release adds.
Moving out of committee is just one step for the NASA Authorization bill. To become law, it must also be approved by the full Senate and House of Representatives, and then signed by President Trump.
