SpaceX Will Deliver the International Space Station’s Deorbiting Death Knell

SpaceX Will Make the ISS's Deorbiting
VehicleMarc Piasecki - Getty Images

All good things eventually come to the end, and even the International Space Station—the 24-year-long orbital experiment supported by space agencies around the world — can’t escape this inevitable fate. Of course, retiring an aging space station isn’t quite as easy as putting in your two weeks and riding off into the sunset.

No, space stations require a bit more preparation.

Today NASA announced that SpaceX will be the author of the ISS’s demise by awarding the company a $843 million contract to build a deorbiting vehicle that safely guides the ISS to its fiery doom. Although SpaceX will develop the vehicle, which will also be punching a one-way ticket along with the famous space station, NASA will take ownership over the deorbiting platform and operate it throughout the entire mission.

With the space station weighing in at around 880,000 pounds, this massive bulk of science will definitely benefit from a guided effort for its disintegration in the Earth’s atmosphere — a process that’s far from easy. In March 2021, for example, NASA released a 5,800-pound cargo pallet containing old nickel hydride batteries using the robotic arm aboard the ISS. The idea was for the entire pallet to burn up on reentry three years later. Things did not go according to plan as a small piece survived the fiery descent and impacted a home in Naples, Florida. So, just imagine the damage something 150 times heavier could do.

By Darren Orf.

Full story at Yahoo News.