CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE STATION — SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk posted on social media that he wants to deorbit the International Space Station sooner than the expected date of 2030.

In a Thursday post on X, formerly known as Twitter which he owns, he stated, “It is time to begin preparations for deorbiting the @Space_Station.”

However, the International Space Station is set to deorbit in 2030 after three decades of service conducting experiments, as a reporter pointed out.

Musk replied that it was up to President Donald Trump to decide to change the deadline, but it was his recommendation to do it in 2027.

NASA issued a statement, saying, “NASA’s current mission plans call for using the International Space Station, and future commercial space stations, in low Earth orbit to conduct groundbreaking science, as well as a training ground for crewed missions to the Moon and Mars. We’re looking forward to hearing more about the Trump Administration's plans for our agency and expanding exploration for the benefit of all.”

On Friday morning, U.S. Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, D-FL, said too much taxpayer money has already been spent on the current plan to deorbit the International Space Station.

“Our government has already expended massive amounts of taxpayer resources on the plan that is currently in front of us. If we scrapped that plan because Elon Musk thinks he knows everything, that's where this is coming from, it's going to waste resources and put us back in the race of innovation and getting back to the moon and doing the work that we need to do,” he told Spectrum News.

Frost, who is a member of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology that oversees NASA, said he is against changing the space station’s deorbit deadline and said it is best to trust the engineers and technicians who are already working on the task.

“I trust the scientist technicians at NASA who work in collaboration with SpaceX and many other private organizations and companies. The private public partnership at NASA's Kennedy Space Center is amazing, and it's a true testament to what can be done here,” he said.

Spectrum News reached out to SpaceX and Musk for comment to what Frost said and is awaiting a reply.

Last year, NASA announced that SpaceX was picked to develop a spacecraft that will be used to safely deorbit the floating laboratory to an unpopulated section of the Pacific Ocean.

The aging space station has become too costly to fix and update, which is why NASA and other space agencies are looking at private companies for replacements.

However, a deorbit of the famed space station — that other international space agencies and private companies use — might disrupt the plans of some businesses.

Some space companies, like Sierra Space and Axiom Space, are in the process of building their own space stations.

How it would work is that they would send up each of their own modules and attach it to the International Space Station and then gradually add a module to the installed one.

Eventually, Sierra Space’s Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) station or Axiom Space’s Axiom Station will detach themselves from the ISS before it deorbits.  

NASA is working with private space companies so they can build and operate their commercially owned space stations that can still be used by various agencies for scientific experiments.

The U.S. space agency is also enabling private industry development of commercially owned and operated space stations, which are planned prior to the deorbit of the International Space Station to prevent a gap in services.