NASA's Plan to Build a Space Tug for Safe ISS Deorbiting

NASA wants to retire the International Space Station (ISS) by 2030 using a "space tug" to deorbit it and then let it burn up in a safe area in the Earth's atmosphere known as Point Nemo. The agency wants to use around $180 million to "initiate development" of its space tug plan, which would not involve actually building and deploying it. The current plan is to use an already existing spacecraft, Russia's Progress, an expendable cargo ship that resupplies the ISS. The US wants to develop its own plan "to have redundancy" as diplomatic relations between the US and Russia have deteriorated.