The International Space Station could keep flying a bit longer than we thought. The orbiting lab, which has hosted rotating astronaut crews continuously since November 2000, is currently slated to be deorbited in late 2030. However, a newly advanced NASA Authorization bill pushes that retirement back by two years, to Sept. 30, 2032.The goal of the extension is "to avoid a gap in continuous human presence and capabilities in LEO [low Earth orbit], thus avoiding ceding leadership to China before commercial stations are ready," the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation wrote in a summary of the bill, which it approved on Wednesday (March 4).
Staying ahead of China in human spaceflight is a key priority of the committee and its chairman, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Last September, for example, the committee held a hearing titled "There's a Bad Moon on the Rise," which stressed the importance of returning astronauts to the lunar surface with NASA's Artemis program before China can pull off the feat (which the nation plans to do by 2030). But it wasn't all moon talk."This is a pivotal moment for our nation's space program," Cruz said during the September hearing. "America must maintain leadership in low Earth orbit while also embarking on a new era of exploration with Artemis."And U.S. leadership in LEO is under threat. China got a crewed foothold in LEO in 2021, when it launched the core module of its Tiangong space station. The nation finished building the T-shaped, three-module Tiangong in late 2022 and apparently plans to operate it into the mid-2030s.The United States, meanwhile, plans to replace the aging ISS with one or more commercial outposts. NASA has been encouraging the development of such stations via its Commercial LEO Destinations program, which has awarded more than $500 million 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 space stations, respectively. Other outposts are in the works, too. The California startup Vast, for example, just raised $500 million for its planned Haven-2 station. And the Houston company Axiom Space aims to operate its own LEO outpost, which will consist of modules that originally launched to, and docked with, the ISS.
The companies behind all of these commercial outposts plan to get them up and running before 2030. But the newly advanced NASA Authorization bill suggests the Senate committee is skeptical of its ability to meet that timeline.Indeed, it instructs NASA not to begin phasing out the ISS until a successor is operational."When one or more commercial space stations is 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 else to chew on in the NASA Authorization bill, which was introduced in March 2025. (The version that the Senate committee just passed is a revision of that original bill.) For instance, it rejects President Trump's planned 24% cut to NASA funding, allocating $24.7 billion to NASA for fiscal year 2026 and $25.3 billion for fiscal year 2027. (Trump's budget request allocated just $18.8 billion to NASA for the current year.) The bill also directs NASA to start building a crewed base on the moon, which is already a key objective of the Artemis program."The lunar base will be capable of long-duration habitation, as well as robotic and human-tended industrial operations to advance science, technology and strategic interests," reads 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 Mars," the release adds.Advancing out of committee is just one step for the NASA Authorization bill. To become law, it will also have to be approved by the full Senate and the House of Representatives, then be signed by President Trump.
