International Space Station to retire in 2030, will fall into Pacific Ocean a year

later:

The International Space Station (ISS), the world’s largest habitable artificial
satellite in space being managed by five countries, will continue its service until
2030 and will then plunge into an uninhabited area of the Pacific Ocean in January
2031, US space agency Nasa has confirmed in a new transition plan.
In a report released last week, Nasa said the ISS would crash into a part of the
Pacific Ocean known as Point Nemo. This is the point furthest from land on Earth,
also known as spacecraft cemetery. Many old satellites and spacecraft, including
Russian space station Mir, and other space debris had crashed there in 2001.
The ISS will be replaced with commercial stations as Nasa has signed agreements
with three private companies to launch commercial space stations for use by both
private companies and government astronauts. These new commercial space
stations will be launched by Blue Origin, Nanoracks LLC and Northrop Grumman
Systems Corporation, Nasa said. The total estimated award amount for all three
funded Space Act agreements is $415.6 million. The commercial stations are
expected to be operational by the late 2020s, before the ISS falls into the ocean.
“The private sector is technically and financially capable of developing and
operating commercial low-Earth orbit destinations, with Nasa’s assistance. We look
forward to sharing our lessons learned and operations experience with the private
sector to help them develop safe, reliable and cost-effective destinations in space,”
Phil McAlister, director of commercial space at Nasa headquarters, said in a
statement.
For over two decades, the ISS has been serving as a microgravity and space
environment research laboratory in which scientific research is conducted in
astrobiology, astronomy, meteorology, physics and other fields. The space station
has till now hosted more than 200 astronauts from 19 countries and aided numerous
scientific discoveries.
“The International Space Station is entering its third and most productive decade as
a groundbreaking scientific platform in microgravity,” said Robyn Gatens, director
of the International Space Station at Nasa Headquarters. “This third decade is one
of results, building on our successful global partnership to verify exploration and
human research technologies to support deep space exploration, continue to return
medical and environmental benefits to humanity, and lay the groundwork for a
commercial future in low-Earth orbit.
We look forward to maximizing these returns from the space station through 2030
while planning for transition to commercial space destinations that will follow,” he
said.
International Space Station:
In the early 1980s, NASA planned to launch a modular space station called
Freedom as a counterpart to the Soviet Salyut and Mir space stations. In 1984 the
ESA was invited to participate in Space Station Freedom, and the ESA approved
the Columbus laboratory by 1987. The Japanese Experiment Module (JEM), was
announced in 1985, as part of the Freedom space station in response to a NASA
request in 1982.
In early 1985, science ministers from the European Space Agency (ESA) countries
approved the Columbus programme, the most ambitious effort in space undertaken
by that organisation at the time. The plan spearheaded by Germany and Italy
included a module which would be attached to Freedom, and with the capability to
evolve into a full-fledged European orbital outpost before the end of the century.
The space station was also going to tie the emerging European and Japanese
national space programmes closer to the US-led project, thereby preventing those
nations from becoming major, independent competitors too.
In September 1993, American Vice-President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister
Viktor Chernomyrdin announced plans for a new space station, which eventually
became the International Space Station. They also agreed, in preparation for this
new project, that the United States would be involved in the Mir programme,
including American Shuttles docking, in the Shuttle–Mir programme.
On 12 April 2021, at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, it was
decided that Russia might withdraw from ISS programme in 2025. According to
Russian authorities, the timeframe of the station’s operations has expired and its
condition leaves much to be desired.
The International Space Station (ISS) is a modular space station (habitable artificial
satellite) in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five
participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA
(Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada). The ownership and use of the space
station is established by intergovernmental treaties and agreements. The station
serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which
scientific research is conducted in astrobiology, astronomy, meteorology, physics,
and other fields. The ISS is suited for testing the spacecraft systems and equipment
required for possible future long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars.
The ISS programme evolved from the Space Station Freedom, an American
proposal which was conceived in 1984 to construct a permanently manned Earth-
orbiting station, and the contemporaneous Soviet/Russian Mir-2 proposal from
1976 with similar aims. The ISS is the ninth space station to be inhabited by crews,
following the Soviet and later Russian Salyut, Almaz, and Mir stations and the
American Skylab. It is the largest artificial object in space and the largest satellite
in low Earth orbit, regularly visible to the naked eye from Earth's surface. It
maintains an orbit with an average altitude of 400 kilometres (250 mi) by means of
reboost manoeuvres using the engines of the Zvezda Service Module or visiting
spacecraft. The ISS circles the Earth in roughly 93 minutes, completing 15.5 orbits
per day.
The station is divided into two sections: the Russian Orbital Segment (ROS) is
operated by Russia, while the United States Orbital Segment (USOS) is run by the
United States as well as by the other states. The Russian segment includes six
modules. The US segment includes ten modules, whose support services are
distributed 76.6% for NASA, 12.8% for JAXA, 8.3% for ESA and 2.3% for CSA.
The space station has been home to many scientific firsts. The first item to be 3D-
printed on the space station occurred in 2014. NASA astronaut Kate Rubins
sequenced DNA in space for the first time in 2016. And the fifth state of matter,
called a Bose-Einstein condensate, was produced in space by NASA's Cold Atom
Lab on the station in 2018.
Astronauts have learned how to grow lettuces and leafy greens in space. The first
space-grown salad was sampled by astronauts in 2015. Now, they're even growing
radishes and chilis on the station. This could be used to one day help astronauts
grow their own food on deep space missions.
China, whose astronauts have long been excluded from the ISS, launched the first
module of its planned space station last year. While not as large as the ISS, the
Chinese space station is expected to be fully operational by the end of this year.
International Space Station: What is the significance?
1. The International Space Station has been hovering in the low Earth orbit for
more than two decades, zooming across the periphery of the Earth at the speed of 8
km per second.
2. International Space Station is one of its kind laboratory that has helped human
civilization research and achieves some cutting-edge scientific and technological
developments.
3. The International Space Station also serves as the host to myriad scientific
activities and experiments that contribute to the preparation of sending the first
woman and first person of colour to space.
4. International Space Station also hosts the groundbreaking work by NASA of
sending the first humans to Mars.