NASA has selected SpaceX to develop a spacecraft that will deorbit from the International Space Station in 2030. The agency announced Wednesday that the contract is worth up to $843 million.
The ISS is nearing the end of its operational life, and as plans for a new commercial space station heat up, the space station that started it all will eventually need to be safely decommissioned within a decade.
Few details about the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle, as NASA calls the spacecraft, have been released so far. But NASA says this vehicle will be different from SpaceX's Dragon capsule, which carries cargo and crew to the station, and other vehicles that perform services for the agency. Unlike these vehicles, which are built and operated by SpaceX, NASA will take ownership of the American Deorbit vehicle after development and operate it throughout the mission.
Both the vehicle and the ISS will disintegrate destructively upon re-entry into the atmosphere, and one of SpaceX's biggest challenges ahead will be ensuring the station re-enters in a way that does not endanger populated areas.
The US Deorbit vehicle launch agreement will be announced separately.
NASA and its partners have been evaluating the use of the Russian Roscosmos Progress spacecraft to perform deorbit missions, but studies have shown that a new spacecraft is needed for the deorbit maneuver. Safe decommissioning of the station is a shared responsibility among the five space agencies that operate the ISS (NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the national space agency Roscosmos), but it is unclear whether the contract amount is actually paid by all countries.
TechCrunch has reached out to NASA for more information and will update this post when we hear back.
