WASHINGTON — NASA has chosen SpaceX to develop the spacecraft that will be used to carry out the final stages of exiting the International Space Station around the end of the decade.
NASA announced on June 26 that it has awarded SpaceX a contract worth up to $843 million to build the United States Deorbit Vehicle (USDV). This contract covers the development of the spacecraft, with NASA doing the USDV launch procurement later.
The agency announced its intention to continue development of the USDV more than a year ago. The spacecraft will dock with the ISS and perform the final series of maneuvers required for the station’s controlled reentry over a distant ocean region such as the South Pacific. The spacecraft will be owned and operated by NASA, not procured as a service, as the agency does with ISS cargo and crew transport.
“The selection of America’s Deorbit vehicle for the International Space Station will help NASA and its international partners ensure a safe and responsible transition to low Earth orbit at the end of the station’s operation,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations. contract announcement.
NASA has not released any details about SpaceX’s design or an illustration of it. SpaceX, which rarely acknowledges media inquiries, did not immediately respond to questions about the design offered by NASA for the USDV. However, the spacecraft is expected to be based in some way on the Dragon spacecraft that is currently used to transport cargo and crew.
In its USDV application, NASA emphasized the importance of vehicle reliability. “It will be a new spacecraft design or a modification of an existing spacecraft that must function on its first flight and have sufficient redundancy and anomaly recovery capability to continue critical deorbit burn,” it said last fall when it released a request for proposals for the vehicle .
The value of the contract appears to be in line with the expectations NASA has set for the program. When Bowersox’s predecessor, Kathy Lueders, announced plans for the USDV in March 2023, she said the agency had come up with an internal cost estimate of “a little less than about $1 billion” but hoped the industry could offer a lower price. NASA requested $180 million for the program for fiscal year 2024.
In a House Science Committee hearing on NASA’s 2025 budget request, which calls for $109 million for USDVs, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson suggested the cost increase to $1.5 billion. He asked members to include full funding for the program in the next appropriations bill.
“We don’t know what the Russian president is going to do, and we could be in an emergency situation where we have to bring this structure, which is the size of a football stadium, down safely in 2031,” he said. cited as the reason for including USDV funding in the supplemental law.
Along with the contract announcement, NASA released a white paper that outlined the options that led the agency to conclude that guided deorbit was the best option. Alternatives such as dismantling the station and returning the components to Earth or relocating them in orbit were ruled out for technical reasons, along with boosting the station to a higher orbit. Handing over the station to a commercial operator, it added, was also not feasible, partly because the station’s components belong to several countries.
The white paper concluded that “deorbiting the space station at the end of its useful life is the safest and only viable method to decommission this historic symbol of science, technology and cooperation”.
This deorbiting is scheduled for around 2030, although the procurement included options to store the USDV on the ground until the mid-2030s, presumably if NASA and ISS partners decide to extend the station’s life beyond the planned 2030 retirement. The White Paper included this as an option as well.
“If there are no commercial LEO targets by 2030 to support NASA’s continued LEO needs, expansion of space station operations is possible,” the paper said. “Should operations be extended beyond 2030 for any reason, the USDV can remain on the ground awaiting a final deorbit decision.”