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Trump budget directs NASA to drop International Space Station in 2025

James Dean
Florida Today

NASA would end its participation in the International Space Station in 2025 under a Trump administration budget proposal released Monday, an idea that one influential senator immediately called a “non-starter.”

The International Space Station was photographed from the space shuttle Atlantis as a shuttle departed the orbiting complex for the final time in the early hours of July 19, 2011.

The $19.9 billion spending plan for 2019, up about $400 million from this year, seeks to refocus near-term human exploration on the moon and shift responsibility for low Earth orbit missions to industry or international partners.

“In short, we are once again on a path to return to the moon with an eye toward Mars,” said Robert Lightfoot, NASA’s acting administrator.

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The space agency next year would make an initial $150 million investment in unspecified commercial systems that by 2025 would enable a “seamless transition” from NASA’s existing ISS program.

It was not clear if NASA envisions partners taking over the ISS, or pieces of it, or if the football field-length research complex could be dropped from orbit and replaced by new commercial stations.

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Some members of Congress oppose abandoning the space station so soon.

“The administration’s budget for NASA is a nonstarter,” said U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, ranking member on the committee that oversees NASA. “Turning off the lights and walking away from our sole outpost in space at a time when we’re pushing the frontiers of exploration makes no sense.”

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who leads the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, also recently referred to supporters of exiting the ISS as “numbskulls.”

Congress has directed NASA to study the feasibility of extending the ISS operations to 2028 or 2030, but the study is not yet complete. 

Commercial space advocates welcomed the Trump administration’s goal, but even they acknowledge the private sector might not be ready in 2025 to replace NASA as primary underwriter for station operations.

“We don’t want to see a capability gap in low Earth orbit,” said Tommy Sanford, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. “We want to ensure that there’s a smooth transition.”

The concern is that the nation could be left with nowhere to send astronauts and do science research and technology development in low Earth orbit, just as the nation now is in the midst of a nearly seven-year gap in its ability to launch astronauts from U.S. soil.

Since the shuttle's retirement in 2011, NASA has helped develop privately run rockets and spacecraft to haul cargo to the ISS 250 miles above Earth. Two companies, Boeing and SpaceX, hope to launch astronauts by next year.

NASA spends about $3.5 billion annually on the ISS, including launches of cargo and astronauts.

Under the proposed budget, some of the savings from ending ISS funding would be steered toward lunar exploration initiatives.

In 2022, NASA hopes to launch the first portion of a small station to be placed in orbit around the moon.

The same mission plans to launch astronauts in an Orion capsule for the first time atop the 321-foot Space Launch System rocket, lifting off from Kennedy Space Center.

No target date is set for a human mission to the lunar surface, in which NASA might play a supporting role to international or commercial partners.

Lightfoot said NASA would invest in a "series of landers" including small ones that could act as robotic lunar scouts. That could benefit a company like Cape Canaveral-based startup Moon Express.

"I am very happy to see America's return to the moon supported by the president's budget request with an increased NASA budget leveraging the capabilities of the commercial space sector," said Bob Richards, Moon Express founder and CEO. 

Mary Lynne Dittmar, executive director of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, said she was pleased to see the budget's focus on lunar exploration. However, that focus is not paired with any significant increases in NASA's budget over the next few years.

"With the flat budget going out several years, undertaking an ambitious new lunar program seems to me to be a daunting challenge," said Dittmar, who in 2015 was part of a National Research Council team that studied human exploration options. "That said, I’m happy to see this direction."

NASA's funding for science missions next year would grow slightly to $5.9 billion, with less for Earth science missions and more for planetary missions.

Another controversial proposal would cancel the $3.2 billion Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, or WFIRST, due to its "significant cost and higher priorities within NASA." The mission was scientists' top priority in the most recent decadal survey for astronomy and astrophysics.

The budget also would eliminate nearly $100 million supporting NASA's Office of Education, repeating a proposal Congress rejected a year ago.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com.

Twitter: @flatoday_jdean

Facebook: /SpaceTeamGo

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