The International Space Station (ISS) could soon host private companies. The White House has indeed announced its intention to no longer fund the NASA program related to this space building, for which the United States has already spent 100 billion dollars.
According to the Washington Post , this figure concerns both the launch of the ISS, but also its operating costs.
NASA relies on international collaboration to fly NASA astronauts from space agencies in Europe, Japan and Canada for the sole purpose of advancing scientific research on the universe and the globe.
By 2025, the US will, therefore, withdraw from the financial contribution, without this coming to end the life of the station. An internet document from the US Space Agency, which the newspaper was able to discover, states a wish to propose “certain parts or capacities” of the ISS in a commercial project, and thus to get closer to the private sector, thus attracting possible interested companies.
The International Space Station has been a commercial hub since 2008 when it started an orbital refueling program with SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company, which recently sent a Tesla to Mars.