Why is NASA going to crash the ISS into the ocean? (2024)

FAQs

Why is NASA going to crash the ISS into the ocean? ›

Answer: Because that's the only way to get it down safely.

Since its first modules launched at the end of 1998, the International Space Station has been orbiting 250 miles above Earth. But at the end of 2030, NASA plans to crash the ISS into the ocean after it is replaced with a new space station, a reminder that nothing within Earth's orbit can stay in space forever.

NASA has recently disclosed its ambitious $1 billion strategy to orchestrate the re-entry of the International Space Station (ISS) back to Earth. The agency plans to retire the ISS in 2031 due to the structural stresses that have been accumulating over its prolonged period of service.

The decommissioning plan for space station is the execution of a responsible, controlled, and targeted deorbit into a remote ocean area. During descent through the Earth's atmosphere, the space station would burn, break up, and vaporize into fragments of various sizes.

Since the 356-foot-wide laboratory is too big to completely vaporize if left to naturally burn in Earth's atmosphere, the space agency intends to send a US spacecraft to help deorbit the station and direct its reentry over the unpopulated South Pacific.

As a result, Nasa has decreed that the ISS, which now consists of 16 pressurised modules, will be terminated and sent spiralling into the Pacific Ocean in 2031.

The whole station could stop working and it would carry on orbiting in exactly the same way - it doesn't need any kind of propulsion to orbit, just momentum. Not much to the Earth, but it would kind of write-off the ISS. The ISS wasn't designed to undertake re-entry, so that will be its final manoeuvre.

Russian accusations

In 2021 Russian state-owned news service TASS published accusations from an anonymous source claiming Auñón-Chancellor had an emotional breakdown in space and sabotaged the Soyuz spacecraft by drilling a hole in the module attached to the ISS during Expedition 56 in 2018.

NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia) and the European Space Agency are the major partners of the space station and contribute most of the funding; the other partners are the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

What is the average NASA astronaut's salary? According to NASA, civilian astronaut salaries are determined by the US Government's pay scales – or more specifically grades GS-13 to GS-14. As of 2022, the GS-13 pay scale ranges from $81,216 to $105,579 per annum. This is up to $8,798.25 per month or $50.59 an hour.

Will the ISS be retired? ›

“NASA is transitioning to commercial low Earth orbit destinations at the end of the decade with the retirement of the International Space Station in 2030.

All of this is interspersed with the planned retirement of the ISS . Its aging hardware means that NASA and the other ISS partners have decided, at the moment, to end the project in 2031. Commercial space stations in low Earth orbit , it's hoped, will replace much of the current work done by the ISS .

China's self-built space station, also known as Tiangong, or Celestial Palace in Chinese, has been fully operational since late 2022, hosting a maximum of three astronauts at an orbital altitude of up to 450 kilometers (280 miles).

ISS is the largest space station ever built. Its primary purpose is performing microgravity and space environment experiments. International Space Station program insignia, with flags of the original signatory states.

The ISS costs about $3 billion a year, roughly a third of NASA's annual human space flight budget, and while current plans call for the Station's retirement in 2024, an extension to 2030 is likely.

The ISS is only visible because it reflects sunlight. It isn't bright enough to be seen in the middle of the day and the best time to view the ISS is either at dawn or dusk. Viewing opportunities of the ISS can vary between one sighting a month to several a week, depending on your location and the orbit of the ISS.

NASA intends to keep operating the International Space Station until the end of 2030, after which the ISS would be crashed into a remote part of the Pacific Ocean known as Point Nemo, according to newly published plans outlining its future.

They experience weightlessness not because of a lack of gravity but because the ISS, and they, are orbiting Earth in constant free fall, says Valerie Neal, curator of space history at the National Air and Space Museum. They're falling toward Earth and moving forward at about the same velocity.