NASA will pay Elon Musk nearly $850 million to dispose of the old space station, and other companies will likely shell out even more to replace it.
For nearly a decade, Russia Escape from the International Space Station The ISS’s modules would move with it, taking it out of orbit and putting its life support systems at risk. After years of negotiations, Russia was persuaded to stay longer than planned, but NASA says the ISS will finally reach the end of its useful life in 2030.
after that Elon Musk It will kill it.
Image source: Getty Images.
Hit deal scored with ISS
This is the result of a contract signed by NASA late last month, in which the space agency will pay Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX $843 million to build a “US Deorbit Vehicle” to perform a “controlled, safe and responsible de-orbit of the International Space Station after its operational life ends in 2030.”
It’s not 100% clear whether the “US” designation on the deorbiter means that SpaceX will only deorbit the US section of the ISS. The other four space agencies – namely the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Russia’s state-run space corporation Roscosmos – may have other plans for their respective modules and equipment on board the ISS. Roscosmos in particular has never abandoned plans to detach its own module to form the basis of a new all-Russian space station, for example.
But NASA is responsible for at least the U.S. portion of the ISS, and will own and operate SpaceX’s deorbiter once it’s delivered, which NASA has said it plans to use to “tug” the ISS, or push it into a degenerate orbit, where it will burn up in the atmosphere and the deorbiter will burn up with the ISS.
NASA issued several requests for competitive bids last year. The agency would not say who else besides SpaceX had bid on the contract, saying only that SpaceX was the winner.
The space station is dead. Long live the space station!
And that’s not the only space station job SpaceX has landed. As you’ve probably heard, a team of four separate US-based companies are currently floating plans to build new space stations to continue low-Earth orbit research after the ISS is decommissioned. SpaceX is involved in at least two of the four (and possibly a third), but this is less well known.
One of the teams, Star Lab, is made up of both listed and unlisted companies (Northrop Grumman and Airbus (Easy 1.20%)) and a private company (Voyager Space) announced earlier this year that they had asked SpaceX to launch the spacecraft. whole The space station will be launched into orbit in a flash by SpaceX’s new Starship mega rocket. 2028.
The other two companies, Vast space and axiomatic spacehas proposed two alternative space stations, hoping to get into orbit ahead of the Star Labs team with launches in 2025 and 2026, respectively. Vast has announced that it will use SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to launch its Haven-1 module into orbit next year. Axiom has not made a similar launch announcement, but it has a long relationship with SpaceX and is already transporting a team of astronauts practicing space operations at the ISS on SpaceX’s Falcon 9. It would be reasonable to assume that Axiom will also piggyback off SpaceX when the time comes to launch.
What space investors need to know
Put simply, SpaceX stands to make a lot of money from working on the space station. The company plans to do both, destroying the old ISS and putting a new facility in orbit to replace it, over the next few years. Unfortunately, SpaceX is not currently a publicly traded company and has no plans to IPO anytime soon, making it difficult for investors to cash in. However, SpaceX could be helping other contractors with their work to help put the space station into orbit, making other companies even more valuable.
Which of these publicly traded companies is the most attractive investment? Valuations are not that high, but… Convincing But my gut feeling is that Airbus (one of STAR Labs’ partners) offers the most value right now: its stock is trading at just over 26 times earnings, cheaper than Northrop, STAR Labs’ other big partner, and, unlike Northrop, has no net debt on its balance sheet.
if Boeing The company was the largest aerospace company involved in building the original International Space Station, but its biggest rival, Airbus, now appears to be the largest and best-valued publicly traded backer of the ISS replacement facility.
Rich Smith The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Disclosure Policy.
