Mark Megahan
NASA wants you to watch out for falling satellites. Not for a while, though, and it shouldn’t be a big deal. They plan to ditch the International Space Station into the ocean and they’re giving everyone lots of heads up time. In 2030 it’s marked for destruction in the Pacific. Even so, they’re keeping their fingers crossed that they get the calculations right. Hitting Chicago could be embarrassing.
NASA to retire ISS
NASA reminded everyone recently that the International Space Station has been circling the Earth for a full 23 years now and it’s beginning to show the wear and tear.
It’ll keep getting the job done until 2030, then they’ll throw the obsolete equipment a retirement party and tip “the ISS to a watery grave in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.” At least, that’s what the report released this week by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration says.
They are already working on plans for more than one shiny new replacement. Uncle Sam got tired of running a flop house for every scientist who showed up at the airlock, so the idea calls “for commercial space stations to replace the ISS.” Three companies landed huge contracts “for the development of low-Earth orbit stations.”
Once the private companies get the hardware into orbit, “NASA will become a customer of the commercial providers, rather than building and maintaining its own station.”
Until the plan materializes, “ISS will continue to be a hub for research.” She may be 30-years-old but she’s still going strong.
“This third decade is one of results, building on our successful global partnership to verify exploration and human research technologies to support deep space exploration.” The station will “continue to return medical and environmental benefits to humanity,” NASA promises.
Future in Low Earth Orbit
Now is the time, NASA insists, to “lay the groundwork for a commercial future in low-Earth orbit.”
According to Robyn Gatens, director of the ISS, they “look forward to maximizing these returns from the space station through 2030 while planning for transition to commercial space destinations that will follow.” They have a little over seven years to crunch the numbers on how to clear the building lot.
“When it comes time to de-orbit, NASA will use propulsion from the thrusters of the ISS and other vehicles to lower its orbit toward Earth.” Once the computers are really happy with the results, which won’t be until about another year later, “operators will give it one more push and it will descend into the atmosphere.”
That’s where things get dicey. The experts are certain of one thing, the reentry will be something spectacular to see.
The space station, they explain, “is too big to completely burn up on re-entry.” NASA already has a blotch on their record from bringing down the station which was replaced by ISS. One of the reasons they don’t want responsibility to do it again the next time. The agency “surely doesn’t want another incident like Skylab, which famously broke up and scattered debris across Australia.”
If the common-core method engineers get the figures right, “the agency plans to carefully aim the ISS’s remains on a trajectory toward Point Nemo, an area of the South Pacific Ocean that’s the farthest from any land.” Point Nemo is “known as the ‘spacecraft cemetery‘ because so much space junk has been sent there to avoid hitting inhabited areas.“
