NASA's New Space Station: A Tech Upgrade With Less Clutter
Nothing in Earth’s orbit can stay in space forever.
This includes the International Space Station (ISS), which has been orbiting 250 miles above Earth for around 25 years. But near the end of 2030, NASA plans to crash the ISS into the ocean.
However, before the death of the original ISS, another new space station is expected to be in operation. And, according to NASA, the new space station will be contracted out to a private company – either Axiom Space, Voyager Space, or Blue Origin.
NASA is giving each company hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and sharing their expertise with them.
NASA is going the private contractor route because the agency believes this will allow the agency to develop technology more quickly and focus on their next goal of putting a station beyond low-Earth orbit for the first time.
According to NASA, the new space station will have a lot of similarities and some differences from the current ISS. It’s important to understand that the original ISS was developed around technology from the 1980s.
NASA expects the new space station to be designed a little more efficiently and right sized for the amount of research that NASA and its partners are going to want to do in low-Earth orbit.
State of the art space laboratories will replace what some astronauts have referred to as “test kitchens” in the current ISS.
There should also be less clutter because today’s digital devices are more compact. One complaint from crew members over the years is the cramping in the ISS due to an abundance of wires and cables all over the place because the structure of the station wasn't designed for some of the systems it has now.
Esthetics should also be more of a factor in the new design. On the space station Axiom Space is developing, there reportedly will be windows in the crew quarters and a huge cupola, described ?as an astronaut's window to the world.
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On the ISS, they have a cupola you can pop your head and shoulders into and see 360-degree views of space and look down at the Earth.
On the proposed Axiom space station, the cupola is so large that astronauts will be able to float their whole body in there and have it be an experience of basically almost flying in space.
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