With the SpaceX partnership, ISS is entering its “golden age” – but what happens next?

After 20 years of continuous inhabitation, the International Space Station has entered its “golden age” and is in turmoil – thanks in large part to the return of US rocket launches via business partner SpaceX.

But if the near future of this symbol of post-Cold War cooperation is assured, NASA wants to start disengaging by the end of the decade, leaving a void that the private sector and China hope to fill.

“This space station has become the spaceport we wanted it to be,” Kathy Lueders, head of the NASA manned space flight program, said at a recent press briefing.

The end of the space shuttle program in 2011 left America dependent on Russian Soyuz rockets for “taxi” trips to the giant satellite.

SpaceX changed that last year with the success of its Crew Dragon, which is now gearing up for its second routine crewed flight, and the third overall, in April.

“Our recent deals with US private industry have allowed us to bring more people into space, more people into the International Space Station,” said Joel Montalbano, director of the NASA ISS program.

Since the spacecraft can carry four people – compared to three for Soyuz – the standard size of the space station’s crew has increased from six to seven.

So the ISS needs a new bed – assembly is in progress.

SpaceX’s Crew-2 mission takes off from Florida on April 22, and the four astronauts will overlap for a few days with the Crew-1 crew before this team returns from their six-month mission.

During this time, the station will accommodate no less than 11 people.

“We’re going to be kind of like I think in camp-out mode,” joked Crew-2 spacecraft commander Shane Kimbrough.

“We just find a place to sleep on a wall somewhere or on the ceiling, it doesn’t matter up there.”

Science in the foreground

“We are entering the golden age of using the ISS,” David Parker, director of humans and robotics at the European Space Agency (ESA).

It was former President Ronald Reagan who invoked the American “pioneering spirit” when he ordered NASA to “develop a permanently manned space station”.

The first components were sent into space in 1998, while the first crew spent several months there in 2000.

The last pressurized module was installed in 2011, leaving the enormous man-made satellite 109 meters end-to-end, about the size of an American football field.

“During the first half of the life of the space station, the main focus was on its construction,” Robert Pearlman, space historian and author of “Space Stations: Art, science and the reality of working in space “.

Now, astronauts still have to work on maintenance tasks, “but the majority of their time is spent carrying out hundreds of scientific investigations,” he added.

Over 3,000 experiments were conducted in this microgravity laboratory, which flies an average of 248 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth at 17,500 mph (28,000 km / h).

And after that?

The immediate future of the ISS is officially assured until 2024 by the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada.

“From a technical point of view, we have cleared the ISS to fly until the end of 2028,” NASA told AFP in a statement. “Additionally, our analysis did not identify any issues that would prevent us from extending beyond 2028 if necessary.”

Montalbano told AFP he plans to launch an analysis later this year for the period 2028-2032.

The use of the space station is expected to evolve.

NASA, which wants to disengage financially to focus on its exploration of deep space with its Moon-to-Mars missions, announced in 2019 that it would like to pay tourists aboard the ISS to help offset the costs.

They will be hitchhiking with SpaceX or Boeing – whose own “Starliner” taxi program is behind schedule.

“I hope we fly the first private astronaut mission in 2022,” Montalbano told AFP.

Competitors are also on the horizon.

Private company Axiom Space wants to build the world’s first commercial space station – first by attaching its modules to the ISS, before detaching and starting orbit on its own.

China plans to start work on its own large space station, Tiangong, this year and hopes to complete it by 2022.

Russia and China last week unveiled plans for a common lunar station, “on the surface and / or in orbit of the moon,” starting a new space alliance.

The move came after Moscow refused to participate in Gateway, the lunar station proposed by NASA.

This could then be a fitting symbol of the end of a decades-long US-Russian space partnership when the ISS is finally out of orbit and plunges into an ocean.

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© 2021 AFP