The European Space Agency wants to extend the ISS's life until 2020

Matt Burns

Matt is a Senior Editor at TechCrunch. Matt Burns is a family man first and attempts to be a writer second. Born and raised in the heart of the automotive world, only cars eclipse his love of gadgets. He previously wrote for Engadget and EngadgetHD before moving into the party house that is TechCrunch. He learned the retail side of... → Learn More

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

issBelieve it or not, the current plan for the International Space Station is to abandon it in 2015 and let it crash into the atmosphere in 2016. Sad, right? But the ESA wants to keep it flying for a few more years to allow more scientist access to the zero-gravity labs.

Of course it’s just not one space agency’s call. The project has five partners, the US, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada, and each will have a say later this at a meeting in Japan. But I think we can all agree that it’s a damn big waste if the ISS is simply abandoned because the world is spending its money on research for seedless watermelons or developing more weapons to kill each other.

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