Elon Musk: The SpaceX company wins the contract to destroy the International Space Station

NASA has chosen Elon Musk-owned SpaceX to tear down the International Space Station at the end of its useful life.

The California-based company will build a vehicle capable of pushing the 430-ton planet-orbiting platform into the Pacific Ocean early next decade.

The contract, worth US$843 million, It was announced this Wednesday.

The first elements of the International Space Station were launched into space in 1998, and crewed operations began in 2000.

The station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes at an altitude of just over 400 km and has been the site of thousands of scientific experiments investigating everything from the ageing process in humans to formulas for new types of materials.

Engineers say the lab structure remains pretty solidbut what it is necessary to establish plans for its eventual eliminationWithout any intervention, the platform would eventually fall to Earth on its own, posing a considerable risk to the planet’s population.

“Choosing a deorbit vehicle for the International Space Station will help NASA and its international partners ensure a safe and responsible transition into low Earth orbit at the end of station operations,” said Ken Bowersox, director of space operations of the organization.

The United States and Russia lead the ISS. Europe, Canada and Japan play supporting roles. Western countries agreed to fund the station until 2030; Russia says its participation will last at least until 2028.

NASA studied several options for the disposal of the space platform at the end of its useful life; among them, dismantling the station and using its youngest elements in a new generation platform. Another idea has been to simply hand it over to a commercial company for its operation and maintenance.

But all of these solutions come with various complications, both in terms of complexity and cost. And then there is the legal problem of having to resolve ownership issues.

Neither NASA nor SpaceX have released the details of the design of the “tug” that will take the International Space Station out of orbit, but this will need a considerable boost to guide it safely into the atmosphere at the right place and time.

The great mass and extension of the platform (it is approximately the size of a football field) means that some structures and components will withstand the heat of reentry and fall to the planet.

Controllers will allow the International Space Station’s orbit to fall naturally over a period of time, and once the last crew has left, they will command the tug to execute the final orbit abandonment maneuver.

Space debris will head to a remote location known as the Pacific Pole of Inaccessibility, or Nemo Point.

Named after the famous submarine sailor from Jules Verne’s book “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”, it is located more than 2,500 km from the nearest land mass.

NASA hopes that several private consortiums have begun launching commercial space stations by the time the International Space Station disappears from the sky.

The focus of space agencies will shift to a project to build a platform called Gateway that will orbit the Moon.

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