In February, NASA will launch the first un-crewed test flight of its Orion spacecraft and SLS rocket as it prepares to send astronauts back to the moon.
Artemis I is the first in a series of increasingly complex missions to take place over the next few years. It will be followed by a second crewed test flight and a third flight that will land astronauts on the moon’s south-pole. NASA expects that will be in 2025, at the earliest.
The agency says partnerships with private companies like SpaceX will build the lunar lander to ferry astronauts to the moon’s surface, making the Artemis program possible.
The private space race has allowed NASA, and agencies like it, to turn their attention from Earth’s lower orbit and start planning for future missions, like Artemis. And as the agency plans to send astronauts to new frontiers, it is encouraging private industry to establish a greater presence in lower-Earth orbit — by collaborating with the private sector on a new space station.
The International Space Station is now more than 20 years old, approved for use until 2024, with a likely extension only until the end of 2028 or 2030. NASA’s office of audits released a report at the start of December detailing the “costly repairs” to the orbiting laboratory that have been needed over time. It said maintenance and system upgrades to the ISS increased to approximately $169 billion in 2020.
On Dec. 3, NASA announced three U.S. Companies that would receive over $400 million in government funding to develop commercial space stations — Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Nanoracks and Northrop Grumman.
Misty Snopkowski, Program Executive for the commercial LEO development program at NASA, says commercial stations, like the one’s these three companies are developing, will help the agency travel deeper into space.
“We’re trying to go deeper into space and we can give this very well understood environment in LEO to commercial entities — for them to start establishing that LEO economy,” she says, adding that instead of owner and operator of a new space station, NASA would be one of many customers using the orbiting laboratory.
With less of its funding tied up in the International Space Station, the agency will be free to throw more cash at deep space exploration, Snopkowski says.
But there is still research that needs to be done in order to make these frontier missions possible. She says the agency has approximately 200 long-term experiments, most of which study the impact of space travel on the human body. The agency needs that work to continue after the International Space Station is decommissioned.
Such research not only helps further NASA’s ambitions in space, it is also helps us tackle big challenges on Earth, says York University astrophysicist Jesse Rogerson.
“Going to the moon and going to Mars is going to push our understanding of how to do agriculture,” he says, as an example of how research in space can help us improve conditions on Earth. “Because we can’t do a permanent settlement on the moon or Mars without ‘living off the land.’ So pushing that science to the very edge so that we can grow something on Mars would inevitably help us do better on Earth.”
Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who acts as CAPCOM at the Canadian Space Agency while he awaits his first flight assignment, says his agency is also involved in discussions about a future commercial space station. In addition to freeing-up funding for future deep space travel, he says such a partnership could reveal new ways to save money on research.
“The space agency, we expect, will always be doing research in orbit. But the model on how we do that could change, could create more opportunities and could allow us to do more for less money,” he says.
Hansen adds that collaborating with private industry will create more opportunities for astronauts to explore space, a boon for the Canadian Space Agency, whose astronauts have had to wait years to go to space as they wait for a seat to open on a mission.
One upcoming mission Canada is taking part in will be Artemis II, the crewed test of the Orion spacecraft that will eventually transport astronauts to the moon.
The private space race will also create more opportunities for scientists and astronomers hoping to conduct research in space, Rogerson adds.
Conversations about the research platform that will eventually replace the International Space Station come amid rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia, another partner on the ISS.
Although space exploration has largely been insulated from politics, tension has reared its head in that domain as well, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticizing Russia for a “dangerous and irresponsible” missile strike that blew up one of its own satellites — stating the U.S. had not been warned about the test.
While Snopkowski did not mention any specific tensions with Russia, or any other international partners on the ISS, she did say NASA is trying to determine how to keep those important channels of communication open.
“There’s a soft diplomacy there when it comes to space — where everybody comes together around it, right, from different parts of the world and so that’s something that NASA wants to maintain,” she says.
“That’s very important for the agency and is something that we’re working on, just to figure out what would that model look like going forward, once we transfer to these commercial platforms.”
Hansen says the Canadian Space Agency is just as committed to international diplomacy as its American counterpart, and he suggests that collaboration between governments “is not going away.”
“We’ve already set a tremendous example of how we can work together, how we can do more together. I don’t think that’s going away. We’re certainly not going to let it go away with a fight, anyway,” he adds.
He says through continued collaboration, between agencies like CSA and NASA and private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, we can develop technologies that will make space travel safer for future generations.
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