By BlueShift and AFP | 2026-02-10

The four astronauts heading for the International Space Station (ISS) this week as SpaceX Crew-12 will be among the few remaining crews to live on board the orbiting station before it is decommissioned in 2030.

NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, French astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev will be replacing Crew-11, which returned to Earth in January, a month earlier than planned.

But the aging ISS is nearing the end of its lifespan, with only 10 to 12 new crew rotations planned before the space station is retired.

The station officially entered service in November 2000, with the arrival of the Expedition 1 crew. It will be decommissioned in 2030, before being pushed into Earth's orbit and crashing into an isolated spot in the Pacific Ocean in 2031.

Over the span of a quarter century, more than 290 individuals representing 26 countries and five international partners have visited the ISS, with the majority hailing from the United States (170) and Russia (64), according to NASA.

Peaceful international cooperation has characterized the ISS since its inception.

Once a symbol of warming post-Cold War relations, it has been a rare area of continued cooperation between the West and Russia since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022, reviving historic tensions between the two powers.

Cross-border collaboration

"The ISS is a cathedral to human cooperation and collaboration across borders, languages and cultures," said John Horack, the former manager of NASA's Science and Mission Systems Office.

"For more than 25 years, we have had people in space, 24/7/365," added Horack, who now holds the Neil Armstrong Chair in aerospace policy at Ohio State University.

"It is a testament to how we can 'figure it out' rather than 'fight it out' when we wish to interact with each other."

But the ISS has not entirely avoided the tensions back on Earth.

In November, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev -- who had long been planned to be a member of Crew-12 -- was suddenly taken off the mission, with media reports suggesting he had violated US national security regulations.

According to the Russian investigative site The Insider, Artemyev had allegedly photographed SpaceX documentation and then used his phone to export classified information, Space.com reported.

Russian space agency Roscosmos merely said he had been transferred to a different job.

"The history of human spaceflight is first and foremost the space race," said Lionel Suchet of France's space agency CNES.

"This is a very interesting moment in the evolution of space exploration," said Suchet, who coordinated several early ISS projects after witnessing its predecessor, the Mir space station, de-orbiting in 2001.

Commercial space stations

The ISS is getting old, and its equipment is outdated.

NASA announced last year it had selected SpaceX to build a vehicle that can push the station back into Earth's atmosphere in 2030, where it will break up.

"This large rocket engine will slow down the ISS, and enable it to have a precise re-entry over the Pacific Ocean, far from land, people or any other potential hazards," Horack explained.

Several spacecraft and telescopes -- including Mir -- have met a similar fate, splashing down at an isolated spot in the ocean called Point Nemo.

After 2030, the only space station orbiting Earth will be China's Tiangong.

For the future, the United States is focusing more on space stations built and operated by private companies.

"We are moving into an era where space stations have a much more commercial dimension," similar to what has already happened with rockets and satellites, Horack said.

Several companies, including Blue Origin and Axiom Space, are already working on plans to build the first commercial space station.

Suchet said "the business model will still be largely institutional because countries are always interested in sending astronauts into low-Earth orbit."

Scientific research and exploration also remain an "objective of all humanity," he added, pointing to treaties that govern how nations are supposed to act in space.

Whether these treaties will hold once humans make it to the moon -- the United States and China both have plans to build lunar bases -- remains to be seen.

For Horack, the end of the ISS could be seen as "quite sad." His children "had a lifetime of going out into the backyard to watch the ISS fly over."

But the end of this era will mark the opening of another, he added.

"We must grow as humans in our space-faring capacity, in our exploration of space, and in the use of space to generate social, economic, educational and quality of life outcomes for all people everywhere."