According to NASA, it awarded SpaceX $843m on Wednesday to construct a vehicle that could potentially cause the International Space Station (ISS) to crash into Earth’s atmosphere where it will be destroyed by 2030, an assignment originally intended for Russian thrusters.
SpaceX will build what Nasa calls the US Deorbit Vehicle in line with its new contract such that the space agency can deorbit the ISS and avoid risks on human settlements. The deal will see Nasa own and handle the deorbiting operation of the craft.
Having been continuously manned by government astronauts for about 24 years, this football field-sized research lab is primarily led by the US and Russia but has been scheduled for retirement in 2030 due to aging components.
The ISS started in 1998 as a world-wide project intended at fostering international cooperation. Weighing 430,000kg, ISS is far bigger than any other structure ever built above earth in orbit. For instance, looking at past events when other stations like Mir or Skylab broke up while re-entering the atmosphere; NASA engineers anticipate three stages of disintegration for this orbital outpost. In particular, first off they expect huge solar arrays as well as radiators cooling down the orbital lab will come out then individual modules are going to come apart from this truss which is also known as station’s backbone structure.
Lastly both these modules plus truss itself will disintegrate. Many pieces of material are likely to vaporize but big chunks may survive. To achieve this end, Nasa’s choice has fallen on an area in Pacific Ocean called Point Nemo one of most isolated places within our globe and recognized as satellites’ grave yard or even spaceship after service life.
For Russia, their space agency Roscosmos says its hardware can last until 2028 when they plan to stop being partners with other countries under ESAP including Japan, Canada and United States although there is a US commitment for the same partnership with these nations till 2030. It is worth noting that Russian thrusters are used to maintain ISS’s orbital altitude while its electrical power sources are supplied by solar arrays from the U.S.
Starting in early 2030s, however, NASA has been backing first-stage development of privately-run low-Earth orbit space stations so as to preserve American presence in that part of space using Airbus and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin being among supporters.
