While NASA will move forward with plans to create a new space station around the Moon – the Lunar Orbit Platform-Gateway – the budget confirmed earlier reports indicating plans to end funding for the International Space Station (ISS) in 2025.
“This budget proposes for NASA to ramp up efforts to transition low-Earth activities to the commercial sector, and end direct federal government support of the ISS in 2025 and begin relying on commercial partners for our low-Earth orbit research and technology demonstration requirements,” Lightfoot said. “Further, drawing on the interests and capabilities of our industry and international partners, we’ll develop progressively complex robotic missions to the surface of the Moon with scientific and exploration objectives in advance of human return there,” he added.
Lightfoot said that the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft are critical backbone elements for moving farther into deep space. “Their momentum continues this year toward the first integrated launch of the system in fiscal year 2020 around the Moon and a mission with crew in 2023,” Lightfoot said. When that mission launches, it will be the first human mission to the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
