The end of a symbol. We are in the mid-90s, the USSR has just collapsed, putting in fact an end to the Cold War. Humanity wants to come together around major projects. One of them will be the ISS. An international space station, permanently inhabited since 2000, which allows all countries to work together on scientific research.
But a quarter of a century later, a lot has changed. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has added fuel to the fire of global geopolitics. The ISS, aging and expensive, has become a burden for the agencies maintaining it, starting with NASA.
Keen to save money, it notified its intention to withdraw from the ISS in 2021. As a substitute, it plans to use private orbital modules and stations to carry out experiments in weightlessness.
What future for the ISS?
During his event Ignition (originally thought to talk about the Artemis program), NASA announced a last-minute reprieve for the ISS. Its end seemed set for 2030, but it should ultimately remain in place until 2032.
For a few years, private companies should send spacecraft to dock with the ISS to allow NASA and its partners to carry out scientific research. A new strategy, which is not to everyone’s taste.
Because since 2021, NASA has claimed to want private space stations, independent of the ISS. Teams of engineers, at Blue Origin in particular, have been working on the plans for this futuristic inhabited base for 5 years.
Axiom Space, big winner?
By changing its tune today, NASA is embarrassing all these companies. The American agency throws 5 years of effort in the trash, completely modifying its project.
Designing a module that docks with the ISS or creating a completely independent station, these are two requests that have nothing to do with each other. But not all private companies are the losers of this affair. Only one company had bet on the right strategy: Axiom Space.
Since 2021 it has not developed a complete base but only vessels, as NASA now wishes. It was enough for complaints of favoritism to appear on the web. Doubts reinforced by the numerous contracts already won by Axiom Space from NASA.
The company founded in 2016 by Michael Suffredini (a former NASA executive) won the coveted AxEMU call for tenders. Behind this barbaric scientific name hide the spacesuits that the astronauts of the Artemis missions will wear. It is in a fabric signed Axiom Space that Man will rest one foot on the Moon.
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