NASA Is Looking For Ways To Deorbit ISS
NASA released a request for information (International Space Station Deorbit Capability) from U.S. industry for capabilities to contribute to safely deorbiting the International Space Station as part of its planned retirement after 2030.
Since 1998, five space agencies (the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the State Space Corporation “Roscosmos”) have operated the International Space Station, with each responsible for managing and controlling the hardware it provides. The station was designed to be interdependent and relies on contributions from across the partnership to function. The United States has committed to operating the station through 2030 and other partner space agencies continue to work through respective government processes on extension and utilization beyond 2024.
More: NASA Seeks A Commercial International Space Station Deorbit Capability
17 responses to “NASA Is Looking For Ways To Deorbit ISS”
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Don’t deorbit it. Push it out to a Lagrange point. It’s history. Keep it.
Getting it to a Lagrange point isn’t necessary. Just boosting it up to 600 km altitude or so would give it a lifetime against decay of over a century. High end but existing ion thrusters could do that using the station’s own power.
This is a great idea.
Even if you could strap an ion engine on it to get it up to a graveyard orbit it then what? It isn’t like the ISS is built to be untended so you just power everything off and leave it as a dead hulk in a stable orbit? For what purpose so some space Indiana Jones can go explore it 50 years from now? Putting it in a higher orbit then risks one of those gravity disaster movie scenarios where given it is powered down it can’t avoid an mmod strike and it becomes millions of pieces of debris raining down on all the operational satellites below it. Just put it in the ocean in a controlled manner and close the book on it.
Ion engines can not supply the delta V needed. If they could, they would already be used to maintain its current orbit.
The ion thrusters going on the Gateway Power and Propulsion Element certainly could do the job. They don’t use electric propulsion for station keeping because ISS doesn’t have enough power for both normal operations and operating sufficiently large enough thrusters. But we weren’t discussing normal operations.
I’d assume they would just turn it over to the Smithsonian and make it a destination for space tourism. A SpaceX Dragon can reach the higher orbit. As far as orbital debris is considered, I hope people realize the movie Gravity basically contained nothing which was factually correct.
It’s incredibly expensive just to keep running, and unmaintained, it’s a source of debris. It’s an obsolete space station, dispose of it properly and build a new one.
Unfortunately there is no safe way to deorbit without the risk of debris coming down on land. Due to its size, the deorbit task would take several orbits. There are no cases were a controlled multiple deorbit path doesn’t pass over land. To get a controlled deorbit even then takes a lot of delta V. Without control, there is no way to control the descent adding risk of a big chunk making it to the surface we’re there are people. I sure wouldn’t like to be an insurance company in this case. Given the government is self ensured, the government will have to cover all damages as well as the bad PR. When the ISS was approved by Congress, NASA was supposed to have a safe deorbit plan in place. They didn’t and still do not………. To avoid the issue, the approach has been to kick the can down the road (extend the orbital life) and let final deorbit be someone else’s problem.
Any new space station will most likely be commercial. NASA wouldn’t be able to get funding for Lunar and Mars missions AND another space station.
Another consideration is what is Russia going to do? They may want to take their parts of ISS and use them to build their own space station leaving the US and other partners to fend for themselves. ( Assuming the Russians can afford to build another space station on there own.)
Not practical nor safe. Requires to much delta V, would require multiple boosters. Also there a several layers of orbital debris – going to a higher orbit would require the ISS to pass through at least one of these layers, which could result in impacts and even mor debris. NASA has researched this option and determined it is not practical nor safe.
Like the new layout but it was really nice to see the number of comments without having to click on the topic.
I doubt many will like this idea but put a nuke on it and just vaporize it.
Based on the results of the Starfish 2 test, that would be a bad idea. It would create a temporary, artificial radiation belt and disable most of the spacecraft in similar orbits.
Those tests were in the 1.4 to 1.45 Mt range. Nothing that large would be needed.
A trinity test size bomb in the 10-15 Kt range would be more than sufficient to vaporize the ISS and reduce the effects you describe to maybe nothing more than a major solar storm.
Seems like the billions and billions spent but to throw it all away… I remember Sally Ride mentioned during Augustine Commission II in 2009, “we created the Apollo program but then threw it all away. Now we have the Shuttle program but we are going to throw it all away.” (paraphrase). Are we doing the same thing again? ISS be thrown away then to do Artemis. Eventually that will be thrown away to do something else? Or maybe NASA develops the technology then hand it off to commercial which they decide whether it is worth sustaining or not?