So I’ve just heard they’ve set a year of 2032 to decommission the International Space Station. Since if they just left it, its orbit would eventually decay and it would crash. Rather than have a million tons of metal crash somewhere random, they’ll control the reentry and crash it into the spacecraft graveyard in the pacific.
But why not push it out of orbit into space? Given that they’ll not be able to retrieve the station in the pacific for research, why not send it out into space where you don’t need to do calculations to get it to the right place.
In: Planetary Science
There’s this misconception that something in orbit is not bound to gravity anymore. Even though astronauts in the ISS experience weightlessness, this because de ISS is falling (continuously) around the earth.
An object in orbit around earth is still under the influence of earth gravity. Let’s forget about the ISS and let’s think about a hanging lamp you want to decommission. What is more expensive, cut the hanging cord to let it fall to the floor or attempt to throw in the sky so hard that it escapes earth gravity?
It is the same logic for the ISS, it’s way cheaper to just let it fall back to earth, letting gravity do its thing than spending a lot of very costly fuel to throw it into space.
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