A federal road map calls for reduced staffing and an expanded role for private companies in space operations
The US government has confirmed it will begin winding down operations on the International Space Station (ISS), with the goal of retiring the orbiting lab by 2030. The decision is included in the White House’s Fiscal Year 2026 Discretionary Budget Request released on Friday.
NASA first detailed the plan to decommission the ISS in December 2021. This was reiterated in follow-up 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 2026 budget request would allocate around $18.6 billion to NASA, down from $24.9 billion in fiscal year 2024, with deep cuts to science programs. The Trump administration stated that crewed and cargo missions to the ISS would be significantly reduced during the transition period. Remaining onboard research will focus on long-duration spaceflight studies crucial to upcoming Moon and Mars missions – efforts that are strongly backed by US President Donald Trump and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
NASA is expected to rely more heavily on the private sector to maintain a US presence in low Earth orbit. The budget request says the agency will replace the ISS with “commercial space stations,” which will gradually take over operations previously handled by the aging government-owned facility.
The ISS was launched in 1998 as a joint effort involving the US, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, and other countries. The project began with the launch of Russia’s Zarya module in November 1998, followed by NASA’s Unity module delivered by the Space Shuttle Endeavour in December that year. Since then, the ISS has hosted astronauts from over a dozen nations and supported thousands of science experiments.
Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, previously raised doubts about extending ISS operations until 2030. In July 2022, then-Roscosmos head Yury Borisov announced that Russia would leave the ISS program after 2024 and begin building its own Russian Orbital Station (ROS). In 2024, Borisov approved a master schedule for constructing the ROS through 2033, though he later clarified that Russia’s exact exit date would depend on the condition of the ISS.
