NASA Names SpaceX to Develop 'U.S. Deorbit Vehicle' for ISS Retirement

TapTechNews June 27 news, NASA announced on Wednesday (June 26) that SpaceX will be responsible for developing the 'U.S. Deorbit Vehicle' used to safely guide the retirement of the US segment of the International Space Station. The contract value of this project is up to 843 million US dollars (TapTechNews note: currently about 6.134 billion Chinese yuan), but it does not include the launch cost and is only for the development of the vehicle itself.

According to NASA's statement, this vehicle will 'deorbit it in a controlled manner when the International Space Station's service life expires in 2030.' In the statement, NASA's leadership affirmed the contribution of the space station and stated that the retirement of the space station will pave the way for the planned commercial space station.

At present, many major partners of the space station have promised to continue operating until 2030, while the Russian space agency has confirmed its support until 2028.

Although the retirement date of 2030 has been mentioned in NASA's budget documents in recent years, some NASA officials said that the space station may continue to operate after that date. '2030 is not a key node,' Steve Stich, NASA's commercial crew program manager at Johnson Space Center in Houston, said at a briefing on January 25 this year.

Stich added that the space station will continue to operate until the commercial space station is built and can accommodate the space station personnel. 'We hope (the commercial space station) can provide support, and when they are ready, the space station will retire gracefully.'

Currently, several commercial space station projects are in different stages of research and development. For example, AxiomSpace is developing its 'Axiom Station', and Blue Origin is jointly developing the 'Orbital Reef' space station with SierraSpace, Boeing, and Amazon. In addition, VoyagerSpace is also collaborating with Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to develop the 'Starlab' space station, and VastSpace based in California plans to launch its 'Haven-1' module using SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket in 2025.