SpaceX was chosen by NASA to build a spaceship that will be utilized to complete the last stages of the International Space Station’s deorbiting at the end of the current decade.
On June 26, NASA declared that SpaceX had been given a contract for up to $843 million to construct the US Deorbit Vehicle (USDV). This contract only addresses spacecraft development; NASA will handle USDV launch procurement at a later date.
The organization declared its intention to pursue USDV development more than a year ago. After docking with the International Space Station (ISS), the spacecraft will carry out the last set of maneuvers required to execute a controlled reentry of the station over a remote ocean zone, such as the South Pacific. Unlike its cargo and crew transportation on the International Space Station, the spacecraft will be owned and operated by NASA instead of being contracted out as a service.
In a statement announcing the contract, NASA associate administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox stated that “selecting a U.S. Deorbit Vehicle for the International Space Station will help NASA and its international partners ensure a safe and responsible transition in low Earth orbit at the end of station operation.”
NASA withheld information concerning SpaceX’s architecture, including a schematic. Questions concerning the design that SpaceX submitted to NASA for the USDV were not immediately answered by the company, which does not often reply to media requests. However, it is anticipated that the spacecraft will draw inspiration from the Dragon spacecraft, which is presently in service for personnel and cargo transportation.
In its request for proposals for the USDV, NASA stressed how crucial vehicle dependability is. When it released the request for proposals for the vehicle last fall, it said in a statement that “it will be a new spacecraft design or modification to an existing spacecraft that must function on its first flight and have sufficient redundancy and anomaly recovery capability to continue the critical deorbit burn.”
The contract value seems to be in line with what NASA had anticipated for the project. Bowersox’s predecessor, Kathy Lueders, stated that the agency had estimated an internal cost “a little bit short of about $1 billion” when she made the announcement of the USDV plans in March 2023, but she hoped that industry could provide a lower figure. For the initiative, NASA asked for $180 million in the 2024 budget year.
During the House Science Committee hearing on NASA’s 2025 budget request on April 30, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson revealed that the project will now cost $1.5 billion instead of the $109 million originally requested. He urged the lawmakers to make sure the program receives full funding in the upcoming emergency spending measure.
He gave the following justification for the USDV funding in a supplemental bill: “We don’t know what the president of Russia is going to do, and we could be in an emergency situation that we have to get this structure that is as big as a football stadium down, and down safely, in 2031.”
NASA published a white paper detailing the choices that lead the agency to determine that a controlled deorbit was the optimal option along with the contract announcement. Technical concerns precluded both raising the station to a higher orbit and disassembling the station and bringing its components down to Earth or reusing them in orbit. It went on to say that it was also impractical to turn the station over to a commercial operator because its components are owned by multiple countries.
The space station’s deorbiting at the end of its useful life is the safest and only practical way to decommission this iconic representation of cooperation, research, and technology, according to the white paper’s conclusion.
Although the purchase contained options to store the USDV on the ground until the mid-2030s, presumably if NASA and the ISS partners opted to extend the station’s life beyond the projected 2030 retirement, that deorbiting is slated for approximately 2030. That was also an option stated in the white paper.
“The extension of space station operations is a possibility if there are no commercial LEO destinations ready to support NASA’s ongoing needs in LEO by 2030,” the study said. The USDV can stay on the ground until a final deorbit decision is made if activities are delayed past 2030 for whatever reason.
