ISS Will Plummet To a Watery Grave In 2030 (theguardian.com) 87
The International Space Station (ISS) will continue its operations until 2030 before heading for a watery grave at the most remote point in the Pacific, Nasa confirmed in a new transition plan this week. The Guardian reports: More than 30 years after its 1998 launch, the ISS will be "de-orbited" in January 2031, according to the space agency's budget estimates. Once out of orbit the space station will make a dramatic descent before splash landing in Point Nemo, which is about 2,700km from any land and has become known as the space cemetery, a final resting place for decommissioned space stations, old satellites, and other human space debris. Also known as the "Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility" or the "South Pacific Ocean Uninhabited Area," the region around the space cemetery is known for its utter lack of human activity. It's "pretty much the farthest place from any human civilization you can find," as NASA put it. Nasa said it plans to continue future space research by buying space and time for astronaut scientists on commercial spacecraft.
Re: Space cemetery (Score:1)
Showing that flame in zero gravity suffocates itself?
Anywho, why not send it into the Sun?
Re: Space cemetery (Score:5, Insightful)
It would cost less fuel to send it to Pluto than into the Sun, but it probably hasn't got enough fuel to get to the Moon because that wasn't in the mission parameters.
Space Ccemetery 2199 (Score:2)
It would cost less fuel to send it to Pluto than into the Sun, but it probably hasn't got enough fuel to get to the Moon because that wasn't in the mission parameters.
Besides, under that plan, by 2199 we would lose the Moon due to the hazardous waste explosion at the lunar cemetery.
It would be a tragedy for earth to to lose all the blue-wigged hotties living there!
Harder to go up than down [Re: Space cemetery] (Score:5, Informative)
Send it off into space, even easier. Or even the moon.
The amount of cluelessness about orbits here on slashdot is daunting.
What do you mean by 'send it "off" into space'? It's in space already. Do you mean, send it further up to a higher orbit? Do you mean, send it all the way out of Earth's gravity well?
Both of those require boosting it up against Earth's gravity. That means, add a lot of energy. They are very hard to do.
Sending it to the moon is also sending it up, and would take literally hundreds of tons of fuel to do.
Dropping it into the sea, on the other hand, is down. It doesn't require any fuel, since once you brush against the Earth's atmosphere, that happens automatically. (But does require some fuel if you want to target the landing exactly, of course.)
Is there any real need to crash it into the sea?
No, the alternative would be to boost it a little higher and just let it stay in orbit. But unless you boost it thousands of kilometers higher, it's going to come down eventually.
Re:Harder to go up than down [Re: Space cemetery] (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a good post about what it would take to boost the ISS to a stable orbit. To get to a more or less permanent orbit, you'd need to get it to a LaGrange point (although even the LaGrange points require some maintenance to maintain orbit).
https://www.quora.com/Why-cant... [quora.com]
The estimate is that it would take roughly 700T of fuel to get the ISS to L1 (which is most of the way to the moon), assuming no radiation shielding is added (which it really would need to be if it were out that far unless you want the astronauts to suffer pretty serious health impacts). 700T would be seven fully loaded Starships (assuming the Starship flies before 2030 and meets its deign parameters). Then you have to consider that the ISS was not designed to handle the sort of thrust that would be required to boost it. But even if that were a solvable problem, you'd be expending an enormous amount of effort to get an aging and mostly obsolete space station up that high.
If you really wanted to go to the effort of building a space station that would never de-orbit, you'd be FAR better off trying to build a moon base instead. That could be radiation shielded with lunar soil/rock which means you wouldn't need to haul all that shielding mass with you. The moon base would also have a potential water source available, and would have the added advantage of gravity for the crew (zero gravity being rather bad for health over the long term). A new base also wouldn't have the problem of being filled with 30+ year old hardware.
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If you really wanted to go to the effort of building a space station that would never de-orbit, you'd be FAR better off trying to build a moon base instead. That could be radiation shielded with lunar soil/rock which means you wouldn't need to haul all that shielding mass with you. The moon base would also have a potential water source available, and would have the added advantage of gravity for the crew (zero gravity being rather bad for health over the long term). A new base also wouldn't have the problem of being filled with 30+ year old hardware.
I'm rather hoping it will be filled with blue-wigged hot babes.
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People have this misguided belief that being at (or near a) Lagrange point magically imbues an object with some sort of magical "stability". At least you recognise that an artificial satellite there (any of the 5 values of "there) would need regular station-keeping - most people don't.
I happen to have the "orbit & characterisation" paper for "
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What about just stopping turning the steering wheel, like Nascar drivers do, and driving straight forward in order to leave the Earth's orbit?
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Sending it into the sun would entail accelerating it 67000 mph away from the earth in the opposite direction to the Earth's orbit, or putting it into a very eccentric orbit around the sun first, and then using some thrust at the outermost point to de-orbit it into the sun. Where would that thrust come from?
Re: Space cemetery (Score:1)
The same place that diesel for wreckage retrieval and cleanup ships comes from?
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Particularly Japan was properly screwed when they contributed with a module, but were not allowed to use it.
And why? Because the Americans wanted it to be like that.
At the same time Japan was developing a new superior space suit, and wanted to share this with other ISS participants, but the Americans wanted none of it, so now Japan is developing its own space program.
If anything, it proved that while astronauts from different
Japanese astronauts [Re:Space cemetery] (Score:5, Informative)
Actually it turned out to be not such a great way to do the Kumbaya at all! Particularly Japan was properly screwed when they contributed with a module, but were not allowed to use it.
Have you told that to Akihiko Hoshide, who is in orbit right now as the commander of the ISS? It's his third flight to the station.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Their agreement was that in exchange for sending cargo to the station on the HTV, they would have astronauts sent to the station on Soyuz or Dragon flights. If they wanted more astronauts sent to the station, they need to make an agreement to fly more cargo missions.
At the same time Japan was developing a new superior space suit, and wanted to share this with other ISS participants, but the Americans wanted none of it, so now Japan is developing its own space program.
Japan has had its own space program for fifty years. They launched their first satellite in 1970.
And lots of people are developing space suits, including JAXA: https://humans-in-space.jaxa.j... [humans-in-space.jaxa.jp] But no, they don't have one qualified and ready for flight yet.
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I couldn't find any basis for SciCom's claims. In fact all I could find was that Japan is and has been using the ISS and as you stated has had its own space program for decades.
They have these experiments currently being run (according to Wikipedia) so I don't see how you can say that the US has stopped the Japanese from using the ISS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It looks like Japan has also committed to continue using the ISS until at least 2024.
https://sputniknews.com/201512... [sputniknews.com]
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This type of waste is typical of an irresponsible beaucracy. Isn't dumping both illegal and irresponsible? Isn't allowing large objects to reenter the athmosphere is inherently risk?,Couldn't NASA incorporate it into some sort of orbital platform?
personally speaking, I'm dissapointed by NASA's apparent mismanagement of the space station program. We should have a real space station by now, you know, one that rotates and allows for long term stays, shouldn't we? We need orbital assembly capacity and habitatio
Re:Space cemetery (Score:5, Informative)
Ya, it looks like the ISS hasn't contributed anything in the last 20+ years.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_p... [nasa.gov]
https://theconversation.com/fi... [theconversation.com]
https://www.sciencefocus.com/s... [sciencefocus.com]
The ISS is not completely useless (Score:2)
Just a huge waste of money. A few small discoveries of limited impact that could have been made much more cheaply by just sending up a robot into orbit. No, cancer has not be cured. Have not even cooked up a decent new virus in the ISS.
NASA does not even pretend that the ISS is about Science. They talk of Science projects like the Webb as a different type of project.
The point of the ISS is simply to exist. To put astronauts into space just because we can. Period. Much like the the point of building p
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If those are "breakthroughs" god knows what they'd consider failures. Most of them look like undergrad final year projects.
All of it? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Russians have been talking about re-using their modules for something else. So is the entire thing going to be de-orbited or will parts of it live on?
Shame they can't preserve it for posterity.
Re:All of it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? From what I recall, it's the Russians saying their modules are too old to maintain that is one of the primary factors driving the end of ISS operations.
"We can't risk the lives [of our cosmonauts]. The situation that today is connected to the structure and the metal getting old, it can lead to irreversible consequences - to catastrophe. We mustn't let that happen," Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov was quoting as telling state TV. source [bbc.co.uk]
Even the "new" Nauka module is fifteen years old, so by 2030 I suspect it will also be in the "reached the end of their service life" category.
Re:All of it? (Score:5, Informative)
Better source [phys.org] : In recent years, the Russian segment of the ISS has experienced a string of problems, including air leaks caused by cracks, raising questions about the safety of the rotating crews onboard.
"Around 80 percent of the inflight systems on Russia's segment have reached the end of their service period," Vladimir Solovyov, chief engineer of the Energia rocket and space corporation, told the RIA Novosti news agency.
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Yeah, this.
With the Mir, it was either ditch it, or it will ditch itself on it's own.
Same thing with ISS. It's just too old to fix. 2030 I think is way too optimistic.
I don't think non-Russian modules are in much better shape.
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Really? From what I recall, it's the Russians saying their modules are too old to maintain that is one of the primary factors driving the end of ISS operations.
"We can't risk the lives [of our cosmonauts]. The situation that today is connected to the structure and the metal getting old, it can lead to irreversible consequences - to catastrophe. We mustn't let that happen," Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov was quoting as telling state TV. source [bbc.co.uk]
Even the "new" Nauka module is fifteen years old, so by 2030 I suspect it will also be in the "reached the end of their service life" category.
AFAIK (haven't managed a lot of research into this belief) we've deorbited all of the stations we've launched into space before they were no longer human usable. Have we left any modules in space to look into the degradation of the materials and how long it actually takes to no longer be safe for humans to be on board, and what materials or methods can be used in space to extend the life of the materials?
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No. The ISS is a genuinely large space craft, some 100m in length, therabouts, just letting it break up in space has two effects.
1) We actually know what happens. We dont NEED to do this, the science is already fairly sound.
2) And that science includes leaving a ridiculously large amount of debris in orbit posing threats to sattelites etc.
Theres no good argument for leaving it up there once its past its use-by. Its time to put the old girl to rest.
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No. The ISS is a genuinely large space craft, some 100m in length, therabouts, just letting it break up in space has two effects.
1) We actually know what happens. We dont NEED to do this, the science is already fairly sound.
2) And that science includes leaving a ridiculously large amount of debris in orbit posing threats to sattelites etc.
Theres no good argument for leaving it up there once its past its use-by. Its time to put the old girl to rest.
True, I was thinking more of a single module station that would likely not breakup but just degrade the atmosphere seals I'd think. Could leave one of those up beyond its human usable life and still be able to deorbit it later. I was asking more if any of this type of experiment has ever been done.
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One of the early experiments on the Shuttle system was the Long Duration Exposure Facility [wikipedia.org] which was intended to answer exactly that sort of question.
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One of the early experiments on the Shuttle system was the Long Duration Exposure Facility [wikipedia.org] which was intended to answer exactly that sort of question.
Thanks for the pointer! The little searching I did failed to come up with anything.
Re:All of it? (Score:4, Insightful)
IMHO, it is outstanding that it has lasted so long, going over what it was expected to do in the first place given a defined time span.
Keep in mind that this a different context that where we live in basically at the surface of the planet.
There is all kind of data collected along the life of such a station with regards with the actual environment where it does its task and the fact that they could prolong the expected initial life expectancy is interesting.
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Shame they can't preserve it for posterity.
My thoughts exactly, should it be kept as a museum piece that our grandchildren could look at and think "how quaint". To ditch it would be a huge loss of heritage. How much fuel would it take to push it up to a parking orbit where it could stay for a long time ?
Re:All of it? (Score:5, Informative)
Because there's not a rocket made today or anytime in the foreseeable future that contains enough fuel to move the ISS to a parking orbit.
Can the International Space Station be moved to a higher orbit, like halfway between the earth and moon? [quora.com]
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Another question is do we really want to do that, even if we could? If we moved it to a parking orbit and basically abandoned it, it will eventually begin to break up. Tidal stresses over the years will play on it. Without active maintenance and fuel for the thrusters so it can dodge orbital debris. Impacts from this debris will cause more debris to break off the space station. Can you imagine the amount of orbital pollution this thing would make as it breaks apart?
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It will be destroyed. The ISS is in a naturally decaying orbit and periodically needs to boost back up - it's altitude actually varies quite a bit. If you abandon it, it will likely de-orbit based on orbit decay within a few years - it's quite close to touching the tendrils of the upper atmosphere. Sometimes the atmosphere expands due to solar winds causing even
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While the individual modules would probably be strong enough to sit under their own weight on the ground, that's a lot more challenging for the (relatively small diameter) connectors between the modules. And as for the radiator panels and solar panels (obviously at right angles to each other) ... the connectors between them and the main body are even skinnier.
Even if you had a "magic sky crane" (emphasis on the "magic") that could lower the whol
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I think it's safe to say moving ISS up into a parking orbit has been ruled out.
For museum use, it would be interesting to save some piece of it by bringing it to Earth. The Space Shuttle had the capability to bring payloads back from space, but AFAIK nothing currently exists to do that. Maybe the Starship could if it's operational by then? One good candidate for an item to be saved would be the Cupola - it's a very iconic module, pretty small and in a spot where it maybe could be removed.
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Second, some of their modules will be towed away and used as a station core. That is planned - the new Pirs module is definitely one of those.
Third, it will happen BEFORE 2030. Their target date was 2027 when they get the nuclear tug in orbit. However, with the current political situation that may happen
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The thrusters that will be used to de-orbit the station are in the Russian segment.
The old modules are not really in a great shape, and it would be a huge problem to detach them. Not only are there all kinds of internal and external connections between them, the different modules don't have their own propulsion systems so separating them safely would require some other, as yet nonexistent, spacecraft to act as tugs. Others have pointed out how much fuel it would take to boost the station to a permanent orbi
R'lyeh (Score:5, Insightful)
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We should all, at anytime, give a chance to the runner.
Busted pitch (Score:4, Funny)
so tells us NOAA [noaa.gov].
Turns out it's the point on earth with the highest risk of man-made satellite debris coming down on your head. How's that for "getting away from it all"? Don't travel with these guys, their salespitches are dangerous lies.
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I guess I didn't get the memo. When did NOAA start being a travel agency?
If you are relying on NOAA for your travel plans I think you have bigger problems to worry about than space debris. 8^)
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Posting to remove mis-moderation. (I'd not had coffee yet, thus was humour-impaired.)
Not many facts in the article (Score:1)
What happened? Last I heard they found micro cracks in the hull. So they're just going to crash it instead of trying to fix it? Must be nice to spend other people's money.
Re:Not many facts in the article (Score:4, Interesting)
According to https://www.whatitcosts.com/in... [whatitcosts.com] there is a cost of 24-29 billion for the Space Shuttle program (keeping the people up there alive) for the period 2008-2016, it's 3-4 billion a year for NASA, so if they believe they made the most out of it already they might want to start spending on something else.
a boat is a hole in the water you pour money into (Score:2)
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So they're just going to crash it instead of trying to fix it? Must be nice to spend other people's money.
You're assuming it would be cheaper to repair it? Must be nice to to second-guess other people's budgeting.
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You can only fix micro cracks for so long before it becomes a losing proposition. There are still 8 years of patching cracks to look forward to as it is.
Thuoght question (Score:4, Interesting)
Let us suppose that instead of having the large oceans we do now, our planet was a more jumbled mix of smaller bodies of waters and land mass. The oceans, instead of being the vast open stretches they are now, were interspersed with land.
How would NASA, or its equivalent, decommission things such as the ISS since there wouldn't be these open areas to drop them into?
As a side note, Point Nemo sounds like a great place to get away from it all. Has anyone considered setting up a resort?
Re:Thuoght question (Score:5, Funny)
Has anyone considered setting up a resort?
A habitat will rapidly be deployed in January 2031. I heard they've got satellite.
Re: Thuoght question (Score:4, Interesting)
They would deorbit shit into deserts then or so suspect.
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There are basically two problems to solve when de-orbiting stuff.
First, landing it in the right place. It's not easy to de-orbit things with precision, especially large irregularly shaped things with minimal manoeuvring capability. Oceans are nice big targets, but even then it's a challenge for something like the ISS.
So in this thought experiment just allowing it to crash to Earth isn't a good idea. Avoiding habited areas will be almost impossible.
The second issue is what burns up and what doesn't. Some mat
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There are basically two problems to solve when de-orbiting stuff.
First, landing it in the right place. It's not easy to de-orbit things with precision, especially large irregularly shaped things with minimal manoeuvring capability. Oceans are nice big targets, but even then it's a challenge for something like the ISS.
So in this thought experiment just allowing it to crash to Earth isn't a good idea. Avoiding habited areas will be almost impossible.
The second issue is what burns up and what doesn't. Some materials will burn away into gases, but some won't. With the ISS you are going to get quite significant chunks of metal reaching the ground.
In this hypothetical scenario I think the only reasonable option would be to dismantle the ISS and boost individual parts of it into graveyard orbits in a series of missions, and de-orbit stuff that will burn up completely.
Specialized thrusters that carry lots of oxidizer and use the structure itself as fuel would be ideal. Think of it as the rocket equation in reverse. The more of the structure you convert into fuel the more efficient your thrusters become at moving what is left. Before you know it remaining modules are well on their way onto someone else's solar system. Who knows maybe someday it will become a tourist attraction.
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Let us suppose that instead of having the large oceans we do now, our planet was a more jumbled mix of smaller bodies of waters and land mass. The oceans, instead of being the vast open stretches they are now, were interspersed with land.
How would NASA, or its equivalent, decommission things such as the ISS since there wouldn't be these open areas to drop them into?
Some options:
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Probably the best way to do things in your thought experiment is to break the ISS into small sections before deorbiting. Then the small sections would mostly burn up in the atmosphere and what reaches the ground would have minimal effect.
Reusability ? (Score:2)
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Adding on to the ISS was the opening scene of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: https://youtu.be/q6oTziHKM_c [youtu.be]
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Reusability ? There are old modules and recent modules in it. Why isn't the entire station designed to remove the oldest or damaged ones and keep the more recent, and add new ones ad vitam eternam. 30 years for a 100B$ project seems like a waste to dump everything...
It would be a shame, and yes, useful parts could be saved that way. While other people have pointed out that the pressurized modules, especially the Russian ones, are starting to leak air and are developing alarming cracks, and even the US modules have ongoing mold and mildew problems, the station has brand new batteries and brand new solar panels, and a great deal of external equipment that still works, like CanadArm2.
As far as I've heard so far, the main truss is still intact and still perfectly usable.
Wait till end of epoch (Score:5, Interesting)
They should prolong live of this piece of scrap for seven more years and deorbit it Jan 17 2038.
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They thought about that, but they were afraid the computers would think it was January 1, 1970, and refuse to comply. On the plus side, it will be totally groovy having ISS in orbit when 1970 rolls around again.
Uninhabited (Score:2)
South Pacific Ocean Uninhabited Area
I imagine there are some fish and ocean mammals there that are like, "WTF?" when our space stuff comes crashing down on them ... :-)
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Or they may say:
"Wow, look at this new habitat someone gave us."
8^)
I don't wanna be buried... (Score:2)
Headline: 2030. Story: 2031. Slashdot Editors. (Score:1)
Good work, once again, from the true professionals.
My inner editor is screaming at me. (Score:3)
It's "pretty much the farthest place from any human civilization you can find," as NASA put it. Nasa said it plans to continue future space research by buying space and time for astronaut scientists on commercial spacecraft.
For fuck sake! Has nobody in the universe thought about style while editing? You've got 'NASA', two words, a period, a space, and then 'Nasa." Good lord. Even a cursory glance made that glare out at me like my mom would when I fucked something up as a kid.
The most chilling line in the article (Score:1)
Nasa said it plans to continue future space research by buying space and time for astronaut scientists on commercial spacecraft.
Nasa can't afford their own anymore, now they gotta rent.
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That's the way things are supposed to work with NASA. Once the commercial operators develop a capability which was formerly only NASA's, it is time for NASA to move on to other things that the commercial folks aren't doing. An analogy I've seen is that when NASA needs someone to go across the country, they don't (usually) send them on a NASA owned airplane, they buy a ticket on a commercial airliner.
Editors do not read the post? (Score:2)
I mean the subject says 2030, and the post 2031. A single reading though should have noticed the different year..
And yes 2031 is the current planed year not 2030..
Use the ISS to build the replacement (Score:2)
Moon base (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)s time for a permanent base and hotel on the moon. Earth orbit is old, a lunar base is where itâ(TM)s at Shackleton crater, to be specific.or on the lunar far side where we can have radio telescopes that avoid Earth interference.
Why not give it to someone else? (Score:2)
Why burn it? Someone else could reuse it.
The article is stupid. It's not getting deorbited. (Score:2)
NASA made the decision to extend operations until 2030. There has been no decision that it will be scrapped after that. Only read the link titled "confirmed" in the summary, it has all of the info you need to know, skip the BS article from the Gaurdian which is just speculation.