By 
October 9th, 2024
Image credit: NASA
NASA is faced with safely deorbiting, in one fell swoop, over 400 tons of space hardware in a few years – and ocean specialists are not keen on the move.
Sustaining operations of the International Space Station through 2030 is touch-and-go, prior to its now planned slam-dunk reentry in early 2031 into isolated ocean territory.
NASA has examined, but rejected several options for decommissioning the ISS, including disassembly and return to Earth, shoving the facility into a higher orbit, even a natural orbital decay scenario with random reentry.
Image credit: SpaceX
Purposeful pile driving
NASA announced last June the selection of SpaceX to design the United States Deorbit Vehicle (USDV) under a contract worth up to $843 million.
In a NASA white paper on purposeful pile driving of the ISS into the ocean, a space agency analysis concluded that “using a U.S.-developed deorbit vehicle, with a final target in a remote part of the ocean, is the best option for station’s end of life.”
For details, go to my new SpaceNews story – “Ocean experts raise concerns over deorbiting the International Space Station” at:
https://spacenews.com/ocean-experts-raise-concerns-over-deorbiting-the-international-space-station/
Posted in Space News
Where would we be without “expert” Karens attempting to alleviate their relevance deprivation syndromes?
The “experts” might like to contemplate how many tonnes of shipping has been sunk over the last few thousand years and compare to a 400 tonne space station. I guess it could be de-orbited into the middle of Western Australia instead.