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- NASA plans to award up to $ 400 million to companies that want to build private space stations.
- Out of a dozen or so proposals, NASA aims to select two to four by the end of the year, CNBC reported.
- NASA hopes to be one of the many clients of these private stations after the retirement of the International Space Station.
NASA is set to award up to $ 400 million to companies wishing to build their own space stations.
The agency has relied on the International Space Station (ISS) for 20 years, but it won’t last forever. NASA plans to remove the ISS by the end of the decade, eventually emptying it and pushing it into Earth’s atmosphere to burn it.
NASA does not want to build a new space station itself. Instead, he’s turning to private companies, offering them contracts to build their own resorts through a program called Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Destinations.
The program has “received about a dozen submissions,” CNBC reporter Michael Sheetz, Phil McAlister, NASA director of commercial flights, told CNBC. NASA plans to select two to four of those proposals by the end of the year and distribute up to $ 400 million in contracts among the winners, according to CNBC.
An illustration shows an Axiom Space module orbiting the Earth.
Axiom Space
“We have received an incredibly strong response from the industry to our announcement of free commercial flyer proposals that go straight to orbit,” McAlister told CNBC. “I don’t remember the last time we received so many offers [in response] has a [human spaceflight] contract announcement. “
Operating the ISS currently costs NASA around $ 4 billion a year. Buying facilities at larger stations operated by private companies could save the agency more than $ 1 billion a year, McAlister said.
NASA declined to name the companies that submitted proposals, citing a period of “blackout” while it assesses them. But more than 50 entities expressed interest when the program was announced, including SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing and Airbus, according to Sheetz. McAlister said the current proposals come from a mix of former spaceflight companies and startups.
“We are making tangible progress in developing commercial space destinations where people can work, play and live,” he told CNBC.
NASA used a similar competition to encourage commercial spacecraft
The Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft descended on an Atlas V rocket in Cape Canaveral, Fla., November 21, 2019.
Cory Huston / NASA
NASA took a similar approach when looking for a replacement for space shuttles: It offered funding to companies to develop and build new spacecraft. The agency’s Commercial Crew program chose SpaceX and Boeing from a group of proposals and funded each to develop new human-capable spacecraft. Last year, NASA estimated the program would save it $ 20 billion to $ 30 billion.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft is the product of this program, and it now regularly transports astronauts to and from the ISS for NASA. It also just transported its first tourists on a mission that did not involve NASA beyond using its launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. SpaceX is scheduled another private mission in January, in which it is expected to transport four people to the ISS for the company Axiom Space.
The Crew Dragon Endeavor spacecraft approaches the International Space Station with astronauts on board, April 24, 2021.
Nasa
Private companies have also developed the vehicles that transport goods to the ISS for NASA. As with all of these spacecraft, NASA hopes to be one of the many customers paying for space on future space stations. This is partly why its contracts will not fully finance their development.
“In the future, we don’t plan to pay for all commercial destinations. We don’t think that’s appropriate because companies are going to own the intellectual property and they are going to be able to sell that capability to non-NASA customers. “McAlister told CNBC.
New space stations are already in preparation. China launched the first piece of its own space station earlier this year and just completed its first three-month astronaut mission there last week. NASA, meanwhile, has already awarded Axiom Space $ 140 million to fly modules to the ISS, which will eventually detach from it to become their own space station. Axiom aims to launch its first module in 2024.
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