Deorbiting the ISS
by Sam Atkins
ISS in Earth orbit. Image credit: ESA
The International Space Station is getting old… well, for a space station anyway. It sucks but it happens to all of us. This football field-sized, one-billion-pound amalgamation of metal tubes and solar panels has been flying 400 km over our heads every night for the last 23 years. More than 280 humans from 23 different countries have called this place home at some point and more than 3,000 science experiments have been conducted on board. It’s a shining example of how humans around the world can still come together to work towards a common goal.
The end of an era will soon be upon us, however, as the ISS is scheduled to be deorbited in 2030. Swapna Krishna, a journalist who covers space and technology news, wrote an informative article for Ad Astra talking about when, where and how this will be accomplished safely as well as why alternatives to deorbiting have been rejected.
You can read the article here.
For those in a hurry, here’s the highlights:
🛰️ The ISS modules were designed to last three decades and are starting to show wear and tear. Multiple stress fractures of various sizes, an air leak that is getting worse over time etc.
🛰️ It’s too expensive to maintain and keep the ISS in orbit indefinitely, it would be adding to the space junk problem, and its international status makes for a much too complicated process for a private company to realistically adopt it.
🛰️ Bringing it down in multiple disassembled pieces would be far too expensive, though NASA is coordinating with the Smithsonian to preserve certain smaller pieces.
🛰️ Deorbit will be performed by the United States Deorbit Vehicle, which will be developed by SpaceX, which is based on a modified version of the existing Dragon 2 cargo spacecraft but with a much larger trunk.
🛰️ A crash site hasn’t been decided, though it is likely to be somewhere in the southern Pacific Ocean. Most of the space station is expected to burn up in the atmosphere upon reentry.
🛰️ USVD is set to launch in 2028-2029. The last crew will abandon the station six months before the final phase of deorbiting is scheduled to commence in late 2030 with splashdown expected in January 2031.
Concept art of the USDV performing the deorbiting maneuver on the ISS. Image credit: SpaceX