Tag Archives: international space station

good bye ISS

NASA plans to deorbit the International Space Station “around 2030” and crash it into the ocean. According to Longreads (linking to a Wired article):

The [Deorbit Vehicle] will then move the ISS into the lower atmosphere. Most of it will burn, but some of it will fall into the sea. 

It sounds somewhat spectacular, and possibly risky. I’ll give NASA the benefit of the doubt and assume they know what they’re doing until/unless they show us that they don’t (case studies: FEMA after Hurricane Katrina and CDC during Covid-19). There is no ISS2 in the works – instead, individual countries and private companies seem to be talking about their own space stations and moon bases. Maybe this is partly because technology has improved and costs have come down, so cooperation is no longer necessary just to share the cost. But to me, it is also sad because it represents the end of the post-Cold War era of relative optimism and international cooperation in space.