Commentary Civil and Commercial SpaceSpace Security What Will International Partnerships Look Like Post-International Space Station? PublishedOctober 6, 2025 By Annalise Johnson Download PDF NASA “Tonight, I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station and to do it within a decade,” President Ronald Reagan stated in his 1984 State of the Union address.[i] In the following decade, Canada, Japan, and the European Space Agency (ESA) joined with the United States in a successful multilateral effort to build the International Space Station (ISS). This massive international project marked a shifting paradigm in international space activity from mainly single-nation projects to large, cooperative endeavors. Another major shift is happening in today’s space ecosystem as the ISS is nearing the end of its lifetime. The nature of international relationships for space station cooperation is shifting to become more commercially led in place of government-to-government agreements. [i] Ronald Reagan, “Address before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,” Ronald Reagan Library, January 25, 1984, https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/address-joint-session-congress-state-union-january-1984.
