NASA eye s a possible ISS extension for astronaut missions
Reported by Elizabeth Howell
An artist’s impression of the ISS
© Getty
The International Space Station (ISS) might keep flying past 2030. A senior NASA official said that there is “no big concern” about the health of the ISS that would require an operational stop six years from now, when the current agreement expires between most of the ISS partners. “There’s nothing magical that happens in 2030,” Steve Stich, the manager of the Commercial Crew Program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, said during a briefing about the upcoming SpaceX Crew- 8 astronaut mission to the ISS. Stich said that NASA is eyeing the progress of commercial space stations that will host agency astronauts and science in the 2030s. “We want them to be supportive, and when they’re ready to go, that’s when the ISS will move out of the way,” he said.