NASA Changes Course to Get a New Station in Orbit Before the ISS Retires

Time is running out. In five years, a modified SpaceX Dragon will begin the manoeuvre that will send the International Space Station into a controlled plunge to the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Yet no replacement is ready, and the US risks being left without its own orbital outpost after the ISS retires, while work on China’s Tiangong continues at full pace.

NASA has already channelled $500 million into station development efforts by Northrop Grumman, Blue Origin, Axiom Space and Voyager Space, but the chances of any being completed before 2030 remain slim. Against this backdrop, acting administrator Sean Duffy has signed a directive that upends the entire strategy.

Under the previous plan, one or two winners were to be chosen in early 2026 for large contracts to build and certify full-scale stations. The problem is funding — NASA estimates a shortfall of up to $4 billion. The government budget allocates just $272.3 million for 2026 and $2.1 billion over the next five years, a fraction of what is needed.

Now the agency is shifting to “smaller steps.” A competition will be opened to select at least two, preferably three, developers. Certification will come only after a crewed test flight, and at least a quarter of the funding will be paid only once the station proves it can host four people for a month. Long-term habitability will no longer be mandatory.

This favours teams able to get a simple but functional module into orbit quickly. One frontrunner is Vast, working with SpaceX on the Haven-1 station, designed to house four astronauts for two-week missions and heavily reliant on Dragon’s systems.

Meanwhile, Axiom, Blue Origin and Voyager will need to rework their grander projects under the new rules. Former NASA programme head Phil McAlister puts it bluntly: the old model would never have succeeded, while the new approach gives everyone a shot at reaching the finish line by 2030.

What is clear now is that America’s future in orbit will depend less on government-funded mega-projects and more on private-sector agility — and victory will go to whoever can move fastest from paper to launch pad.