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
>why not leave the ISS in space…
Because the ISS isn’t very far into space. Its standard altitude is 408km which is technically in the very tenuous uppermost reaches of the atmosphere, and as such it actually experiences a very tiny amount of atmospheric drag, which means it occasionally needs to be boosted back up. If it were left alone without support it would eventually de-orbit itself, and while it’s statistically most likely to mostly burn up in the atmosphere with any remaining debris landing in the ocean the risk of ISS wreckage coming down over a populated area during an uncontrolled de-orbit is not zero, and would be “bad PR”.
>reuse it rather than literally throw the whole thing away
Because the ISS is getting old. Bits of it date from 1998 and have been in orbit for well over twenty years at this point when they were originally designed to have only a fifteen-year lifespan. There comes a point where servicing or preserving any piece of technology becomes significantly less cost-effective than simply replacing it. Its mission has already been extended – it was originally intended to be de-orbited by 2016 – and there’s a possibility it will be extended again beyond 2031 depending on the reliability of its existing systems and economic factors, but sooner or later it will end, and the responsible thing to do will be to safely and deliberately de-orbit it at that time.
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