It canceled the ISS conference, which threatens NASA’s budget discounts for crew and goods

The International Space Station (ISS) still has a few years in orbit before returning to retirement, but the future of the tropical laboratory appears slightly defeated as NASA has to tighten its strings.

The CASIS Center, which runs the National ISS Laborat I mentioned. The ISS Research and Development Conference is scheduled to be held at the end of July in Seattle, but Kasis Declare This week, after consulting NASA, “the organizational environment and the current budget do not support the annual conference holding this year.

This announcement comes a little more than a month after the release The so -called slim management budget, Including NASA’s financing in 2026. The budget proposes a $ 6 billion reduction of the agency, 24 % less than the current NASA budget of $ 24 billion.

ISS financing can be reduced by a quarter of 1.24 billion dollars to $ 920 million, according to the proposed budget for 2026. “The low research capacity of the station will focus on the efforts made by the moon and Mars exploration programs.”

During a briefing held in late May, Dana Weigel, the director of the ISS program of NASA, revealed that the Space Agency is already facing resource problems related to the space station before the 2026 budget proposal. “The station faced a multi -year cumulative reduction in the budget. Quoted In SpaceNEWS Say. “This is the challenge that we faced today. We have left it with some budget challenges and resources that lead to less charges.”

Shipping includes supplies for crew members on board. For more than two decades, the Space Agency maintained a crew consisting of at least four astronauts from NASA on the International Space Station, along with members of the international crew from Russia, Japan, Canada and other countries. Wigel said during a briefing that NASA had previously conveyed four or five shipping missions annually, but the agency planned only three drops in 2025. “This is something we work in and we are trying to evaluate today.” NASA is also considering expanding the period of missions on the international space station from six to eight months, formerly Ars Technica I mentioned.

Meanwhile, there are five commercial space stations, including tropical coral reefs, Axiom, and Starlab, currently operating but anywhere ready to host astronauts in the low Earth orbit. ISS maintains a fixed presence of tropical sciences above the surface of the earth, which will leave behind a large gap to fill it.