‘NASA & SpaceX will bring down space station when it’s retired’

Cape Canaveral: SpaceX will use a powerful, souped-up capsule to shove the International Space Station out of orbit once time is up for the sprawling lab.

NASA and Elon Musk’s company on Wednesday outlined the plan to burn the space station up on reentry and plunge what’s left into the ocean, ideally at the beginning of 2031 when it hits the 32-year mark. The space agency rejected other options, like taking the station apart and bringing everything home or handing the keys to someone else.

NASA gave SpaceX a USD 843 million contract to bring down the station — the biggest structure ever built off the planet.

Why get rid of the space station?

The space station is already is showing signs of age. Russia and the US launched the first pieces in late 1998, and astronauts moved in two years later. Europe and Japan added their own segments, and Canada provided robotic arms.

By the time NASA’s shuttles retired in 2011, the station had grown to the size of a football field, with a mass of nearly 1 million pounds (430,000 kilograms).

NASA figures the station will last until at least 2030. The goal is for private companies to launch their own space stations by then, with NASA serving as one of many customers.

That strategy — already in place for station cargo and crew deliveries — will free NASA up to focus on moon and Mars travel. NASA could decide to extend the station’s life, too, if no commercial outposts are up there yet. The aim is to have an overlap so scientific research is not interrupted.

Why not bring it back to Earth?

NASA considered dismantling the space station and hauling the pieces back to Earth, or letting private companies salvage the parts for their own planned outposts. But the station was never intended to be taken apart in orbit, according to NASA, and any such effort would be expensive and also risky to the astronauts who would handle the disassembly.

Besides, there’s no spacecraft as big as NASA’s old shuttles to bring everything down. Another option would be to boost the empty station to a higher, more stable orbit. But that, too, was dismissed given the logistical issues and the increased risk of space junk.

How will it be brought down?

Visiting spacecraft periodically boost the space station so it remains in an orbit approximately 260 miles (420 kilometres) high. Otherwise, it would keep getting lower and lower until it plunged, uncontrolled, from orbit.

NASA wants to ensure a safe reentry over a remote section of the South Pacific or possibly the Indian Ocean, so that means launching a spacecraft that will dock to the station and steer it toward a watery grave.

NASA expects some denser pieces to survive, ranging in size from a microwave oven to a sedan, in a narrow debris field 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometres)

long.