Image source, a pot
- author, Jonathan Amos
- Role, BBC science correspondent
NASA has chosen SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, to shoot down the International Space Station at the end of its useful life.
The California-based company will build a vehicle capable of pushing the 430-ton platform orbiting our planet into the Pacific Ocean early next decade.
Contract, worth it 843 million US dollars, It was announced this Wednesday.
The first elements of the International Space Station were launched into space in 1998, and crewed operations began in 2000.
The station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes at an altitude of just over 400 kilometers, and thousands of scientific experiments have been conducted there, in which all kinds of phenomena have been studied, from the aging process of human beings to the formulation of new types of materials.
Engineers say the laboratory structure is still standing very strongbut what It is necessary to make plans to eliminate it eventually.Without any intervention, the platform will end up falling to the ground on its own, posing a great danger to the planet’s inhabitants.
“Selecting an extra-orbital vehicle for the International Space Station will help NASA and its international partners ensure a safe and responsible transition to low Earth orbit at the end of station operations,” said Ken Bowersox, the organization’s director of space operations.
The United States and Russia operate the International Space Station.Europe, Canada and Japan are playing supporting roles. Western countries have agreed to fund the station through 2030; Russia says its participation will continue until at least 2028.
Image source, a pot
NASA has considered several options for disposing of the space station at the end of its useful life, including dismantling the station and using its latest components in a new generation platform. Another idea is to simply hand it over to a commercial company to operate and maintain it.
But all of these solutions involve different complications, both in terms of complexity and cost. There is also the legal problem of having to resolve ownership issues.
Neither NASA nor SpaceX have published details of the design of the “tug” that will remove the International Space Station from its orbit, but this You will need a big push To guide it safely into the atmosphere at the right place and time.
The platform’s large mass and width (it’s about the size of a football field) means that some structures and components will endure the heat of reentry and fall back to the planet.
Controllers will allow the ISS orbiter to descend naturally over a period of time, and once the last crew has been removed, they will direct the tug to proceed. Final orbit abandonment maneuver.
The space debris will be directed to a remote location known as the Inaccessible Pole in the Pacific Ocean, or… Point Nemo.
Named after the famous underwater sailor from Jules Verne’s book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, it is located more than 2,500 kilometers from the nearest landmass.
NASA hopes that several private consortia will begin launching commercial space stations by the time the International Space Station disappears from the sky.
The space agencies’ focus will shift to a project to build a platform called Gateway that will orbit the Moon.
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