NASA has officially called upon companies to submit designs for a so-called U.S. Deorbit Vehicle (USDV) for the International Space Station (ISS). This pioneering spacecraft would have the crucial mission of safely bringing the ISS back to Earth, marking the ISS’s planned retirement.
The unprecedented project comes with an estimated price tag “a little short of about $1 billion,” as reported earlier this year by Kathy Lueders, NASA Associate Administrator for Space Operations.
Although initial considerations revolved around employing Russian spaceships for this monumental task, NASA, in a strategic shift, opened the floor this month to proposals from U.S. industry. The deadline for these innovative submissions is set for November 17, following the initiation of the call for designs on September 20.
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