On Feb. 20th, 2025, Elon Musk wrote on X expressing how he wants the International Space Station to be deorbited as soon as possible to enable America to focus more on landing humans on Mars. Someone later asked him to clarify further on this. Musk suggested that the orbiting laboratory should retire to point Nemo in early 2027.
The International Space Station has been in operation in low Earth orbit since 1998 until date. However, the hostile nature of space is weakening some parts of the largest space station of our time. NASA and its partners that operate the orbiting laboratory previously announced plans to deorbit the ISS into Point Nemo earlier this decade, due to aging infrastructure and the high cost of maintaining the space station.
In 2024, NASA gave SpaceX an $843 million contract to build a powerful spacecraft that will safely deorbit the International Space Station into its permanent graveyard. While SpaceX is already working on this spacecraft, Elon Musk, the tech billionaire behind the commercial aerospace company is now thinking of deorbiting the ISS faster than earlier suggested and focus more on sending humans to Mars.
NASA, Roscosmos, CSA, ESA, JAXA, and other agencies that operate the ISS previously agreed to extend the operation of the ISS up to 2030. They plan to deorbit the space station between 2030 and 2031. Allowing the orbiting laboratory to operate until the next decade will enable commercial space stations hoping to build their next-generation space stations by docking to the ISS to accomplish their goals.
However, Elon Musk, the head of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) thinks that the continuous operation of the ISS will take more funding which should have put on preparing for a crewed mission to Mars.
Why Elon Musk Strongly Believe that Deorbiting The International Space Station will fasten the human mission to Mars
Elon Musk founded SpaceX with the primary goal of sending humans to Mars. Throughout the years, his aerospace company has been through several challenges that tend to slow his progress of landing humans on Mars in our lifetime.
However, SpaceX has succeeded in downing several impossible stuff that made it the most powerful aerospace company of our time. After achieving great success with its starship, Elon Musk believes that his aerospace company is getting closer to landing humans on Mars than ever. As the new leader of DOGE, Musk wants to help President Trump to cut as much spending as possible.
The ISS which has been operating for decades now is already getting closer to its last operating years. While NASA previously wanted to extend the operation of the ISS to 2030, Musk wants it to be deorbited in 2027 and focus more on perfecting human missions to Mars. However, President Trump and other countries that collectively operate the ISS have to agree on deorbiting the powerful space station in the next two years before SpaceX will take the action.
Elon Musk believed in accomplishing bigger goals faster than normal. If the United States focus more on landing humans on the moon and Mars just like they did during the Apollo era, they will surely achieve such a milestone in the next few years.
It took NASA less than 5 years to build the Saturn V rocket that landed humans on the moon and less than 5 years to perfect how to fly the Saturn V rocket and safely land humans on the moon between July 1969 and December 1972. Musk strongly believes that if we can attain such a milestone in the mid-20th century, we can also do more with modern technologies in the 21st century.
