CAPE CANAVERAL, Fl. – NASA is scaling back its presence in low-Earth orbit as the government focuses on sending humans back to the moon and, eventually, to Mars. As part of that transition, the space agency wants to rent out facilities for its astronauts on new space stations run by private companies. When these stations are ready, NASA will guide the International Space State into the atmosphere, where it will burn up and disintegrate.

At that point, anyone hoping to work in space will have to choose among several different outposts. That means countries won’t just be using these new stations to strengthen their own national space programs, but as lucrative business ventures, too.

Private companies currently backed by NASA, including Lockheed Martin and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, could launch as many as four space stations into Earth’s orbit over the next decade. NASA is also building a space station called Gateway near the moon; a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying the living quarters for the station is scheduled to launch in 2024. Russia and India are planning to launch their own space stations to low-Earth orbit, too, and China’s Tiangong station, which is currently under construction, already has astronauts living aboard.

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