NASA has revealed its $1 billion plan to crash the International Space Station (ISS) to Earth.
The space agency is expected to decommission the orbiting laboratory in 2031 due to accumulated stress on the structure over time.
NASA will pay any company that develops a “space tug” design, a spacecraft powerful enough to pull the ISS out of its orbit and send it to our planet.
The agency is calling the space tug the US Deorbit Vehicle (USDV), which will carry the ISS from 175 miles above Earth’s surface to about 75 miles, where it will begin its final descent into the Pacific Ocean.
NASA has revealed its $1 billion plan to crash the International Space Station (ISS) to Earth.
Proposals must be submitted no later than November 17, and the decommissioning plan for the ISS will begin in 2026, when NASA will allow the spacecraft to decompose naturally.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, told : “This has happened before, particularly with the Mir space station.”
“Many tons of material will end up in the ocean relatively intact, and there will definitely be a warning to clear the airspace (we receive about one of these per month for the disposal of much smaller spacecraft such as ISS cargo ships).”
“Here you will find out what is difficult.” You can safely fly the ISS up to an altitude of around 250 km. After that, this special USDV ship has to take control – it’s like driving on a highway with lots of gusts of wind – you need a lot of muscle power to stay on the road.
“If you ever lose control and the ISS starts to tumble, you’re in trouble because you can’t reliably point the rocket engines in a particular direction.”
The first step in NASA’s plan is to let the ship disintegrate and not restart it so it stays in orbit.
During this time, air resistance will reduce the orbit from about 250 miles above the surface to 200 miles.
However, it will take a few years for this to happen.
In 2030, the crew of the ISS will make the final descent to Earth, bringing with them all important equipment.
The ISS will continue to approach Earth, reaching the “point of no return” at 175 miles above the surface.
And this is where the $1 billion space tug will arrive and give the ISS a little boost from orbit.
The station’s reentry begins between 75 miles and 50 miles above the surface.
The outer skin of the modules will melt, and then the exposed hardware will vaporize as the ISS flies through Earth’s atmosphere at 18,000 miles per hour.
Anything that survives reentry will be targeted at Point Nemo, a region of the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and South America that is often used as a spaceship graveyard – at least 260 ships have been buried there.
“Another trick is that it takes about 8 tons of propellant (fuel and oxidizer) to lower the station from the lowest controllable altitude,” McDowell said.
The space agency is expected to decommission the orbiting laboratory in 2031 due to accumulated stress on the structure over time
“But you can’t use a rocket engine that takes six hours to burn that much fuel because in 30 minutes you’ll be so low that you’ll lose control and start tumbling.”
“So you need a serious rocket engine that can burn eight tons in just about 15 minutes, and do full deorbit combustion in a shorter period of time than the time it takes to get under control.”
“So the USDV has to be big (lots of fuel) and have a big engine (so big thrust in a short time), and none of the existing cargo ships have one of those.”
“Therefore, there is a need to develop a new vehicle to safely dispose of the ISS.”
President Ronald Regan announced the construction of the ISS in his State of the Union address on January 25, 1984, noting that NASA would complete the ISS in ten years.
Then, on December 4, 1998, the first U.S. component of the ship was launched and officially commissioned two years later.
Since the first crew arrived in November 2000, the station has hosted more than 250 visitors from 20 countries.
NASA originally planned to decommission the ISS after 15 years of operation – but that schedule has since been exceeded.
But the huge laboratory in orbit is showing signs of wear and tear, forcing NASA to say goodbye to its trusty ship.
Safely deorbiting the station is the joint responsibility of the five space agencies – including NASA, CSA (Canadian Space Agency), (ESA) European Space Agency, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and the State Space Corporation Roscosmos.
Everyone is responsible for managing and controlling the hardware they provide.
The station was designed to be interdependent and rely on input from across the partnership.
The United States, Japan, Canada and ESA participating countries have committed to operating the station until 2030 and Russia until at least 2028.
NASA said it has examined several options for decommissioning the ISS, including dismantling it and returning it to Earth, moving it to a higher orbit to remain in space, or leaving it in orbit to disintegrate until it accidentally breaks up the earth falls.
The other options fail because the structure is not designed for easy dismantling in space, the spacecraft needs to be recharged to stay in orbit, and disintegration in orbit could pose risks to Earth.
NASA doesn’t want the decommissioning of the ISS to mean the end of its reign over space and has already commissioned a replacement facility.
The American space agency doesn’t want to lose access to these benefits when the station ends, so it has launched a transition plan that calls on private companies to develop a space station.
Several companies want to operate a commercial station, including Axiom Space, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Northrup Grumman.
“The International Space Station is entering its third and most productive decade as a groundbreaking science platform in microgravity,” said Robyn Gatens, director of the International Space Station at NASA Headquarters.
“This third decade is one of the outcomes that builds on our successful global partnership to verify exploration and human research technologies to support space exploration, provide continued medical and environmental benefits to humanity, and lay the foundation for a commercial future in to lay low cost. Earth orbit.