WASHINGTON – NASA has chosen SpaceX to develop a spacecraft that will be used to carry out the final stages of deorbiting the International Space Station around the end of the decade.
NASA announced on June 26 that it 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 to perform a subsequent procurement for the launch of the USDV.
The agency announced more than a year ago its intention to pursue USDV development. The spacecraft will dock with the ISS and perform the final series of maneuvers needed to make a controlled re-entry of the station over a remote ocean region such as the South Pacific. The spacecraft will be owned and operated by NASA, rather than being procured as a service as the agency does with ISS cargo and crew transport.
“The selection of a US 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,” it said in a statement. Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations. contract announcement.
NASA did not release any details about SpaceX’s design or even an illustration of it. SpaceX, which rarely accepts media inquiries, did not immediately respond to questions about the design it provided to NASA for the USDV. However, the expectation is that the spacecraft will be based in some way on the Dragon spacecraft currently used to transport cargo and crew.
NASA, in its request for the USDV, emphasized the importance of vehicle reliability. “It will be a new spacecraft design or modification to an existing spacecraft that must be operational on its first flight and have sufficient redundancy and anomaly recovery capabilities to continue the critical deorbit burn,” it said. it in a statement last fall when it issued the request for proposals for the vehicle.
The value of the contract appears to be in line with the expectations set by NASA for the program. When Bowersox’s predecessor, Kathy Lueders, announced plans for the USDV in March 2023, she said the agency came up with an internal cost estimate of “just under about $1 billion” but hoped the industry could offer a higher price. low. NASA requested $180 million for the program for fiscal year 2024.
At an April 30 House Science Committee hearing on NASA’s 2025 budget request, which calls for $109 million for USDV, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson suggested that the cost had increased to 1.5 billion dollars. He urged members to include full funding for the program in the next emergency appropriations bill.
“We don’t know what the president of Russia is going to do and we may be in an emergency situation where we have to take down this structure that is as big as a football stadium and take it down safely in 2031,” he said. said as justification for including funding for the USDV in a supplemental bill.
Along with the contract announcement, NASA released a white paper outlining the options that led the agency to conclude that a controlled deorbit was the best option. Alternatives, such as disassembling the station and returning components to Earth or reusing them in orbit, were ruled out for technical reasons, along with raising the station to a higher orbit. Handing the station over to a commercial operator, he added, was also not feasible, in part because the station’s components belong to several nations.
The white paper concluded that “deorbiting the space station at the end of its life is the safest and only viable method to decommission this historic symbol of science, technology and cooperation.”
That deorbit is planned for around 2030, although the procurement included options to keep the USDV on the ground until the mid-2030s, presumably if NASA and ISS partners chose to extend the station’s life beyond its planned retirement in 2030. The white paper also included that as an option.
“If there are no commercial LEO destinations ready to support NASA’s continued LEO needs through 2030, extending space station operations is a possibility,” the paper said. “If operations are extended beyond 2030 for any reason, the USDV may remain on the ground pending a final deorbit decision.”