The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) wants to sell off, or possibly donate the International Space Station (ISS) to private enterprise in the next few years. The agency is hoping to hand over control of the orbiting laboratory to a commercial entity sometime in the next decade, it said.

NASA made the announcement during a press conference yesterday on its plans for future manned missions to Mars.

“NASA’s trying to develop economic development in low-Earth orbit,” said Bill Hill, NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development. “Ultimately, our desire is to hand the space station over to either a commercial entity or some other commercial capability so that research can continue in low-Earth orbit.”

In a blog post, NASA expanded on the idea, saying that: “Commercial companies continue to approach NASA to use the ISS in ways we never imagined,” and that today’s solicitation is designed “to determine private market interest in using unique ISS capabilities that have limited availability”.

NASA said no more than that, not even mentioning any potential buyers by name. Any deal would likely be complicated too, given that the ISS is managed by a group of international partners, including the Russia’s Roscosmos space agency and the European Space Agency. It’s not clear what they have to say about the idea.

Coincidentally, NASA’s announcement comes just days after Roscosmos made an announcement that it’s looking at the possibility of reducing its ISS crew contingent from three to two.

NASA and Russia are committed to maintaining the ISS until 2024, which is the orbital platform’s current end-of-life date. However, today’s declaration suggests NASA may be looking to extract itself from the arrangement sooner in order to free up the $4 billion a year it spends on ISS for deep space missions. By handing over ISS to the private sector, NASA would have more funds to spend on proposed crewed missions to Mars and asteroids.

As for potential buyers of the ISS, the obvious candidates would be commercial space operators like Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (Space X) and The Boeing Company, both of which are on track to begin flying astronauts to the ISS by 2018 anyway, and would likely benefit from data on how to minimize the effects of space on the human body. Other interested parties might be commercial space tourism entities such as Virgin Galactic Ltd. and Blue Orgin LLC, which could use the space station to offer extended vacations in zero gravity.

Image credit: WikiImages via pixabay