Dr Sarah Lieberman and Dr Laura Cashman discuss the role of the International Space Station (ISS) and what this could mean for strategic partners following Space X Founder Elon Musk’s call to crash ISS into the Antarctic seas.

If you want to alert the world to an issue in 2025 it would seem the best way to do so is to get Elon Musk to spout forth. Such has been the case with the International Space Station.

In 2024 we wrote a journal article on the importance of the International Space Station (ISS) for diplomacy and US relations with the rest of the world. We argued that over and above its stated role as an off-earth science lab, it provides a neutral arena for cooperation to take place between the USA and Russia, Japan, Canada and the EU.

At the outset of the Ukraine war, Russia threatened that it would leave the ISS in 2024. While noting that it had become expensive and no longer fulfilled its science needs, the diplomatic message was clear. After negotiation, Russia agreed to remain involved until 2028, while the USA’s other bi-lateral partners would stay in place until 2030.

Now, Elon Musk – the new President of the USA’s right hand man – has stated that the USA will crash the ISS into the Antarctic seas in 2027. Who exactly will do this crashing? You guessed it, Elon Musk’s own company, SpaceX.

This would of course save tax payer money –NASA spends around $3.1 billion per year on the ISS programme, and has stated its desire to see low earth orbit inhabited instead by commercially owned and operated space stations. While no mention has been explicitly made regarding who might own these influential space destinations, it is unlikely that Musks’s SpaceX would stand back and let anyone else take the role on given their predominance in government won tenders and contracts for the ISS and other projects.

However, the money saved is unlikely to return to tax-payers pockets. Any savings made from the ISS would instead return to the human space flight budget at NASA, which is currently focussed on crewed missions to the Moon and Mars. Operated by SpaceX. And Elon Musk.

We argued in our article, that for the USA to lose the ISS would be to lose an important facet of space power, and more importantly an important venue for diplomacy. The USA is the primary beneficiary of the ISS. Then again, the primary beneficiary of USAID has always been the USA’s own economy, as highlighted by this now inaccessible US Government document, and USAID has been dismantled in record time since Trump and Musk came to power.

So Qui Bono? Who benefits from this decision? The USA leaves before Russia does. Trump out Putins Putin. Is power now demonstrable by refusal to cooperate? Nasa may not have an outpost in low earth orbit, but the Musk administration will do, as SpaceX is the obvious candidate to operate an alternative.

How will this play out should low earth orbit be militarised? China already has a space station and Russia is planning one. Should their space stations become military bases, could the USA commandeer a commercial space station?   Given the US current isolationism, would Europe find itself out in the cold again?

These questions and more abound. And our article has attracted the attention that academics always desire – it has been picked up by an international media outlet. Given the reasons though, we might have felt more comfortable had it not.

Dr Laura Cashman and Dr Sarah Lieberman teach in the School of Law, Politics and Social Sciences.