NASA’s new chief has radically rewritten the rules for private space stations

About five years from now, a modified Dragon spacecraft will begin to fire its Draco thrusters, pushing the International Space Station out of its orbit and sending the largest object humans have built in space inexorably to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. And then what? China's Tiangong Space Station will still be going strong. NASA, however, faces a serious risk of losing its foothold in low-Earth orbit. Space agency leaders have long recognized this and nearly half a decade ago awarded about $500 million to four different companies to begin working on "commercial" space stations to fill the void. But in that time there has been precious little metal cut, and there are serious concerns about whether any of these replacement stations will be ready to go when the International Space Station falls into the drink. On Monday, in one of his first official tasks, NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy signed a new "directive" on commercial space stations that seeks to address this concern. "To meet the goals of a commercial system within the proposed budget, a modification to the current approach for LEO platforms is required as specified in the remaining sections of this directive," states the document, signed by Duffy. To succeed, he wrote, the strategy "must be altered." NASA's previous plan involved issuing a "request for proposals" early next year as part of a competition that would have selected one or, at most, two companies to move forward into assembly and certification of their stations prior to flight. However, according to Duffy's directive, there is up a $4 billion shortfall in the budget NASA was expected to receive, and what would be needed for this program. The President's Budget Request included $272.3 million in fiscal year 2026 and $2.1 billion over the next five years for the development and deployment of new commercial space stations. Because of this plan's perceived shortcomings, with the new directive, NASA is making some substantial changes to the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations Program moving forward: