US wants to end ISS before 2030
(MENAFN) The US government has announced plans to wind down operations of the International Space Station (ISS), aiming to retire the orbiting research lab by 2030. This decision was included in the White House’s Fiscal Year 2026 Discretionary Budget Request released on Friday.
NASA initially outlined the plan to decommission the ISS in December 2021, and this was reaffirmed in documents published in 2022. According to the new budget request, the transition will focus on shifting to a more cost-effective, commercial approach for human activities in space as the ISS nears the end of its lifecycle.
The 2026 budget would allocate approximately $18.6 billion to NASA, down from $24.9 billion in 2024, with significant cuts to science programs. During this transition period, missions to the ISS will be reduced, with remaining research focusing on long-duration spaceflight studies critical for future missions to the Moon and Mars, initiatives supported by US President Donald Trump and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
NASA plans to rely more on the private sector to maintain a US presence in low Earth orbit, gradually replacing the ISS with “commercial space stations.” The ISS, which was launched in 1998 as a collaborative project between the US, Russia, and several other nations, has hosted astronauts from over a dozen countries and facilitated thousands of scientific experiments.
Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, has expressed concerns about extending the ISS’s operations until 2030. In 2022, Russia announced its intention to leave the ISS program after 2024 to develop its own Russian Orbital Station (ROS), with a construction timeline set through 2033. However, Russia’s exact departure date will depend on the condition of the ISS at the time.
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