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How NASA plans to destroy the International Space Station, and the dangers involved:
NASA has announced plans for the International Space Station (ISS) to be officially decommissioned in 2031. After dozens of launches since 1998 got the station up and into orbit, bringing it down will be a feat of its own—the risks are serious if things go wrong.
NASA's plans for the decommissioning operation will culminate in a fiery plunge into the middle of the Pacific Ocean—a location called Point Nemo, also known as the "spacecraft graveyard," the furthest point from all civilisation.
Finding Point Nemo will be the final stop in a complex and multi-staged mission to transition the operations of the ISS to new commercial space stations, and to bring the remaining structure safely down to Earth.
Originally commissioned for a 15-year lifespan, the ISS is outliving all expectations. It has already been in operation for 21 years, and NASA has given the go-ahead for one more decade, thereby doubling its total planned time in orbit.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @10:04AM (5 children)
For an object in space, they sure are looking for a strange location to get to a furthest point from all civilization.
I know it doesn't have the engines to go out in space, at this time. But that's quite a lot of useful materials that can be recycled for use elsewhere in the star system. Maybe a spacecraft graveyard is more suited on Mars / the moon / any other location we are interested in.
It wll not be simple or easy to get it there, but it's apparently already "not simple and easy" to let it fall down anyway. So I hope they consider it and would love to have an idea of what it would take to do that.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @11:33AM
It's only 250 miles up - about the distance from Chicago to St. Louis. Most of the time it's not really that far from civilization at all.
There's no real use for most of it, aside from existing as the ISS. The only parts that could maybe be reused are the solar panels, which are new.
(Score: 2, Funny) by driverless on Tuesday February 22 2022, @11:41AM (1 child)
In any case it won't deorbit at Point Nemo, due to a strange rounding error it'll be erroneously redirected to some obscure place no-one has ever heard of called Donetsk where it'll land on top of some mostly empty farmland that definitely doesn't have masses of Russian troops and tanks milling around in it. Terribly sorry about that, a miscalculation on our part.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23 2022, @12:59AM
It'll be a costly miscalculation.
When Skylab landed on Western Australia, NASA were sent a fine for littering by a Council Ranger.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 22 2022, @04:51PM
It's easy to get it out of orbit; just stop correcting its trajectory.
The hard part is deorbiting it in a controlled and safe manner so it doesn't possibly come down on a populated area.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Wednesday February 23 2022, @08:16AM
Yeah, not sure why they would want to destroy a billion dollar investment. Even if some parts become uninhabitable, it's still a place to install/protect equipment.
Let's say we crash this thing down, what now? Build skylab 3.0? Can't we just attach skylab 3.0 to ISS?
Not sure how people will travel through space when we cannot even keep a station going.