NASA plans to deorbit the ISS sometime around 2030. Building something the size of the ISS in orbit is a huge undertaking and NASA keeps talking about wanting to build new space stations or a moon base, so why not leave the ISS in space and reuse it rather than literally throw the whole thing away?
In: Planetary Science
NASA put out a few reports like this one – https://oig.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IG-22-005.pdf . There is no single answer, but it comes down to the fact that the vacuum of space is not the inert stable environment that we picture it as. There is solar radiation causing exterior materials to break down, micro-meteorites causing physical damage, gravity from both the Earth and Moon tugging on the station and causing flex fractures. It’s just a long list of seeming small problems compounding on top of the the age of the hull and electronics being out of date and getting worn out.
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