The International Space Station is considered the most expensive object ever created, yet, in just a few short years, NASA plans to crash Earth’s largest and most advanced space station into a fiery grave somewhere in the Pacific.
Growing up on the space coast, I remember watching the space shuttle launch from Cape Canaveral, carrying piece after piece into space, building the ISS into what it is today. I really never imagined I’d be watching them all fall back down to Earth someday.
While we await the ISS’s spectacular decommissioning in the year 2031, let’s focus today on what this show is all about: history. Because this won’t be the first man-made space station to meet its demise. No, an unlucky 13 other space stations have already met a similar fate, and today we’ll be exploring why NASA is planning to crash the most successful station ever.
The first operational space station was a product of the Soviet Union, after taking off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in 1971, the 40,000-pound station was about a tenth the size of today’s ISS. Named Salyut 1, a series of unlucky incidents kept one crew from stepping foot inside, and its second crew actually died on their return trip to Earth.
That accident led to an overhaul of their space program, which kept them from refueling Salyut 1. So they fired its engines in a de-orbit maneuver, leading to the station burning up above the Pacific.
The Soviets launched three more stations before the Americans got involved, but none of them ever received a crew. NASA’s Skylab was the next space station to be fully operational. The station was 3.5 times the size of Salyut 1. While the station’s purpose was scientific discovery, US designers were much more concerned than the Russians with providing habitability to onboard astronauts.
The station was able to use gyroscopes to adjust its orbit, instead of wasting precious fuel, and crews stayed in the station for up to 84 days. Three crews spent time aboard Skylab over its 6 years in service. NASA had predicted Skylab would remain in orbit well into the 1980s, but mispredicted the intensity of solar storms. Both the NOAA and NORAD predicted the station would deorbit early, and the crash of a nuclear-powered Soviet space satellite in 1978 had the world in a panic that Skylab could fall anywhere in the world and create untold havoc. Skylab had no radioactive material, of course, but its batteries were draining.
NASA hoped it could have the space shuttle ready in time to save the station, but when that became impossible, they considered sending two missiles into space to blow it up. Though that plan was also rejected. An uncontrolled crash to Earth was inevitable. People went crazy, painting bulls-eyes on their lawns, selling Skylab repellant, and offering rewards for any debris recovered. NASA estimated the odds of debris hitting someone were 1 in 152, and that there was a 14% chance the station would strike a city with a population over 100,000.
Just before reentry on July 11th, 1979, ground control was able to adjust the station’s orientation, and tried aiming it into the ocean just south of Cape Town, South Africa. The station did not burn up as much as NASA expected it to, and their trajectory was off 4%. The station landed in Australia. Thankfully, nobody was hurt, though NASA did receive a fine for littering.
If you’re prepping for a disastrous re-entry of the ISS in 2031, past performance like Skylab might have you feeling pretty nervous, but NASA assures us it will be more careful this time, crashing the station into Point Nemo, the so-called space graveyard where most space debris is aimed.
If your looking for a safe-haven if the station’s de-orbit goes out of control, the safest place typically to be when some space-born object is going to strike the Earth is ironically, the ISS. But since that’s out of the question this time, your safest bet is probably the Tiangong space station, though that station is also anticipated to be deorbited in the next decade.
Back to our point, why is NASA planning to crash the most successful space station in human history into the ocean? Even though it continues to operate longer than any other station, and had an estimated cost of $150 billion in 2010, it’s not entirely clear. NASA spokesmen seem to indicate the future of space is commercial, that the private sector’s Bezos-backed Blue Origin is more than capable of operating stations without public money. NASA says it plans to be a space customer in the future, not necessarily the trailblazer.
That said, the ISS has a whole decade of life left, meaning its discoveries are far from over. We’ve already learned a ton about the effects of space on the human body for trips to other planets, or extended stays on the Moon. We’ve learned new ways to combat muscle atrophy, and to fight diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, and asthma. We’ve learned more about our own universe, and pioneered the technologies for making better satellites that have enabled all sorts of technologies back on Earth.
