GOODBYE, ISS. HELLO, PRIVATE SPACE STATIONS

FROM ITS INCEPTION, THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE Station (ISS) was an improbable machine. As big as a football field and made of 17 pressurized modules and a pair of massive solar wings, the $150 billion spacecraft has been an instrument of research, exploration, and politics, built and maintained by 15 nations, led by the U.S. and Russia. Even as the war in Ukraine rages, NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, continue to cooperate in space.

But what politics cannot break, time and age can. The ISS is getting old. Its first component was launched nearly 24 years ago, and orbital hardware can last only so long before equipment breaks down, small air leaks appear, and the constant punishment both by micrometeorites and the continual thermal cycling the station goes through on every 90-minute orbit—from 121°C (250°F) on the sunlit side