A government plan outlines a shift towards fewer personnel and greater involvement of private companies in space activities.
The US government has officially confirmed its intention to phase out operations on the International Space Station (ISS), aiming to retire the orbiting laboratory by 2030. This decision is part of the White House’s Fiscal Year 2026 Discretionary Budget Request, which was released on Friday.
NASA initially announced the plan to decommission the ISS in December 2021 and reaffirmed it in subsequent documents published in early 2022.
According to the new document, “The Budget reflects the upcoming transition to a more cost-effective commercial approach to human activities in space as the space station approaches the end of its life cycle.”
The proposed 2026 budget would allocate approximately $18.6 billion to NASA, a decrease from $24.9 billion in fiscal year 2024, resulting in significant reductions to science programs. The Trump administration indicated that crewed and cargo missions to the ISS would be significantly scaled back during the transition. Remaining research on board will concentrate on studies of long-duration spaceflight, which are essential for upcoming Moon and Mars missions—initiatives strongly supported by US President Donald Trump and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
NASA is expected to increasingly rely on the private sector to maintain a US presence in low Earth orbit. The budget request states that the agency will replace the ISS with “commercial space stations,” which will gradually take over functions previously performed by the aging, government-owned facility.
The ISS was launched in 1998 as a collaborative project involving the US, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, and other nations. The project began with the launch of Russia’s Zarya module in November 1998, followed by NASA’s Unity module, which was delivered by the Space Shuttle Endeavour in December of the same year. Since then, the ISS has accommodated astronauts from over a dozen countries and facilitated thousands of scientific experiments.
Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, had previously expressed doubts about extending ISS operations until 2030. In July 2022, Yury Borisov, then head of Roscosmos, announced that Russia would withdraw from the ISS program after 2024 and begin constructing its own Russian Orbital Station (ROS). In 2024, Borisov approved a master plan for the construction of the ROS through 2033, although he later clarified that Russia’s precise departure date would depend on the condition of the ISS.