The International Space Station (ISS) has been in the news in recent days for Boeing’s inability to bring astronauts Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore and Suni Williams back to Earth. Both arrived at the infrastructure aboard the Starliner ship ago. … almost a month, on June 5, and its stay will be prolonged ‘sine die’ due to the leaks suffered by the device. While the aeronautical giant like NASA manages to find a solution – a public appearance is expected this Friday – the US space agency continues planning the end of the ISS, scheduled for 2030.
To this end, it has entrusted Space . The contract amounts to 843 million dollars -787 million euros-. Called the ‘American Deorbitation Vehicle’, it will be a kind of space tug that will drag the 420 tons of the ISS so that it is destroyed upon re-entry to Earth. The remains should fall in an uninhabited area of the South Pacific. “Selecting a U.S. 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, associate administrator of the Space Operations Mission Directorate.
Gateway, the successor on the Moon
Since 1998, the ISS, which has an area the size of a football field, has hosted more than 3,300 microgravity experiments focusing on biology, human physiology, physics and technological tests that are not possible on Earth. It has been managed by five space agencies: the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Russia’s Roscosmos and NASA itself.
While the ISS was the successor to the Russian MIR station, which disintegrated in the Pacific in March 2001, several private companies are planning to launch their own space stations by 2030. One of them is the American company Axiom. Also in charge of the spacesuits for the Artemis mission – which is scheduled to return humans to the Moon in 2026 – it is due to launch the first module within two years. In the meantime, space agencies will focus their efforts on the Gateway, the infrastructure that will orbit the Moon. Work on its construction is scheduled to begin in 2025.
