U.S. Congress to weigh extending ISS life, developing NASA moon base

A U.S. Senate committee will next week consider extending the planned life of the International Space Station (ISS) by two years to give companies more time to develop a replacement.

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation plans to take up legislation on March 4 that would amend a NASA authorization bill with the ISS extension, and add a requirement that NASA build a base on the moon's surface as part of its Artemis program.

The ISS, which has been in orbit for over two decades, has shown signs of aging, including small leaks. NASA had planned to retire the ISS by 2030, and the proposed extension would set its retirement at 2032.

The space agency is increasingly looking to the private sector to take over its role in low-Earth orbit. Companies like Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX are developing commercial space stations, but progress toward a 2030 deployment remains slow, raising concerns about a potential gap in U.S. space activity.

NASA last year tapped SpaceX to build a spacecraft that could attach to the ISS and drag it into Earth's atmosphere for a controlled destruction, opting against preserving it as an orbital landmark to avoid debris risks and potentially costly maintenance.

Adding the requirement for a moon base to NASA's authorization would help cement the agency's desire to establish a long-term presence on the moon, using that experience as practice for future missions to Mars.

SpaceX's CEO Musk expressed his support for such an architecture earlier this month after previously advocating for a direct-to-Mars space exploration approach.

Both SpaceX and Blue Origin are working on lunar landers, with NASA encouraging competition to accelerate their development.

(With input from Reuters)