I feel conflicted on deorbiting the ISS at the end of its operational life. It is showing its age, and newer space stations will be no doubt be better, but it seems a shame to lose such an iconic piece of history.
I wonder if it would be possible to preserve it in space as a museum for future generations to visit. Thoughts?
It wouldn’t be feasible to move it to a higher orbit and make it more permanent, and it can’t stay there forever. At some point it’s going to have to be deorbited on our terms.
It’d be cool to see a similar shaped station with new components put in orbit, but I also think a ring-shaped station is king overdue, despite how impractical it may be.
Genuine question to someone with more aerospace knowledge than me, if there is risk in letting it deorbit as a solid mass, what’s the risk of firing its thrusters to get into a slightly higher orbit, and just… Disconnecting all the station joints and kicking them away from the bulk of the station? It separates them slightly and allows them to spread out for reentry, allowing for greater liklihood of disintegration of most of it.
I think they would have to be able to actively jettison all the modules. For one, a loose cluster will be really hard to predict the impact zone. NASA does try to make sure debris falls over large areas of open ocean.
But I also think it isn’t operationally workable. I don’t think the joints can be remotely disconnected. That means your suggestion requires having crew on board or maybe even doing a series of spacewalks to do this work. I don’t think NASA would be ok with having a bunch of loose and uncontrolled modules in the vicinity of crew spacewalking and eventually a departing capsule. It would be really hard to manage collision risk in that scenario.
So I think either they would try to ditch the solar panels in a controlled fashion so they can more accurately deorbit the whole thing into the pacific, or they’ll have to develope small bolt on thruster packs that can safely jettison the modules 1 by 1.
Everything in space is there temporarily. We can reconstruct it here, but what kind of museum would it be up there? Just a place the rich can visit. No here a replica can inspire kids to be scientists and engineers and pilots. Let it die like the eagle lander died. Space is beautiful and should have its monuments, but we should make sure they’re worth the cost and effort
I mean, I get your point, but tracking it and going out with my telescope to see it fly by outside as a kid was such a foundational moment for me. It’ll be sad to know its gone without a replacement in the meantime
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