It took NASA and its partners nearly four dozen trips between 1998 and 2010 to haul the roughly 900,000 pounds worth of various modules into orbit that make up the $100 billion International Space Station. But come the end of this decade, more than 30 years after the first ISS component broke atmosphere, the ISS will reach the end of its venerable service life and be decommissioned in favor of a new, privately-operated cadre of orbital research stations.
The ISS described by module
The problem NASA faces is what to do with the ISS once it’s been officially shuttered, because it’s not like we can just leave it where it is. Without regular shipments of propellant reactant to keep the station on course, the ISS’ orbit would eventually degrade to the point where it’s forward momentum would be insufficient to overcome the effects of atmospheric drag, subsequently plummeting back to Earth. So, rather than wait for the ISS to de-orbit on its own, or leave it in place for the Russians to use as target practice, NASA will instead cast down the station from upon high like Vader did Palpatine.
NASA is no stranger to getting rid of refuse via atmospheric incineration. The space agency has long relied on it in order to dispose of trash, expended launch vehicles, and derelict satellites. Both America’s Skylab and Russia’s Mir space stations were decommissioned in this manner.
Skylab was America’s first space station, for the whole 24 weeks it was in use. When the final 3-astronaut crew departed in early 1974, the station was boosted one last time to 6.8 miles further out in a 289-mile graveyard orbit. It was expected to remain there until the 1980s when increased solar activity from the waxing 11-year solar cycle would eventually drag it down into a fiery reentry. However, astronomers miscalculated the relative strength of that solar event, which pushed up Skylab’s demise to 1979.
In 1978, NASA toyed with the idea of using its soon-to-be-completed Space Shuttle to help boost Skylab into a higher orbit but abandoned the plan when it became clear that the Shuttle wouldn’t be finished in time, given the accelerated reentry timetable. The agency also rejected a proposal to blow the station up with missiles while still in orbit. The station eventually came down on July 11th, 1979, though it didn’t burn up in the atmosphere as quickly as NASA had predicted. This caused some rather large pieces of debris to overshoot the intended Indian Ocean target South-Southeast of South Africa and instead land in Perth, Australia. Despite NASA’s calculations of a 1 in 152 chance that a piece of the lab could hit someone during its de-orbit, no injuries were reported.
Mir’s deorbit went much more smoothly. After 15 years of service it was brought down on March 23rd, 2001, in three stages. First, its orbit was allowed to degrade to an altitude of 140 miles. Then, the Progress M1-5 spacecraft — basically an attachable rocket designed specifically to help deorbit the station — docked with the Mir. It subsequently lit its engine for a little over 22 minutes to precisely put the Mir down over a distant expanse of the Pacific Ocean, east of Fiji.
As for the ISS’ oncoming demise, NASA has a plan — or at least a pretty good idea — for what’s going to happen. “We’ve done a lot of studies,” Kirk Shireman, deputy manager of NASA’s space station program, told Space.com in 2011. “We have found an orbit and a change in velocity that we believe is achievable, and it creates a debris footprint that’s all in water in an unpopulated area.”
According to NASA standards — specifically NASA-STD-8719.14A, Process for Limiting Orbital Debris — the risk of human casualty on the ground is limited to less than 1 in 10,000 (< 0.0001). However, a 1998 study conducted by the ISS Mission Integration Office discovered that an uncontrolled reentry would carry an unacceptable casualty probability of between .024 to .077 (2 in 100 to 8 in 100). A number of controllable decommissioning alternatives have been discussed over the decades, including boosting the ISS farther into orbit in the event of an unexpected evacuation of the station’s crew.
“We’ve been working on plans and update the plans periodically,” Shireman continued. “We don’t want to ever be in a position where we couldn’t safely deorbit the station. It’s been a part of the program from the very beginning.”
Beginning about a year before the planned decommissioning date, NASA will allow the ISS to begin degrading from its normal 240-mile high orbit and send up an uncrewed space vehicle (USV) to dock with the station and help propel it back Earthward. The ultimate crew from the ISS will evacuate just before the station hits an altitude of 115 miles, at which point the attached USV will fire its rockets in a series of deorbital burns to set the station into a capture trajectory over the Pacific Ocean.
NASA has not yet settled on which USV will be employed. A 2019 plan approved by NASA’s safety council, ASAP, relied on Roscosmos to outfit and send up another Progress spacecraft to do what it did for the Mir. However, that vehicle might not actually be available when the ISS is set to come down because Russia’s commitment to the ISS program terminates in 2024. In April of last year, Russian state media began making noise that the country would abandon the station entirely by 2025, potentially stripping parts from this station to reuse in its upcoming national station and leaving the ISS without a reliable way to break orbit. The ESA’s Automated Transfer Vehicle or NASA’s Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, though still in development, are both potential alternatives to the Progress.
“NASA is continuing to work with its international partners to ensure a safe deorbit plan of the station and is considering a number of options,” spokeswoman Leah Cheshier told UPI via email in 2021, declining to elaborate on what those options might entail but adding that any deorbiting mission would be “shared by the ISS partnership and is negotiation-sensitive at this time.”
The ISS is now entering its third and most productive decade of utilization, including research advancement, commercial value, and global partnership. The first decade of ISS was dedicated to assembly, and the second was devoted to research and technology development and learning how to conduct these activities most effectively in space. The third decade is one in which NASA aims to verify exploration and human research technologies to support deep space exploration, continue to return medical and environmental benefits to humanity, continue to demonstrate U.S. leadership in LEO through international partnerships, and lay the groundwork for a commercial future in LEO.
More than half of the experiments performed aboard the ISS nowadays are for non-NASA users, according to the report — including nearly two dozen commercial facilities — “hundreds of experiments from other government agencies, academia, and commercial users to return benefits to people and industry on the ground.” This influx of orbital commercial activity is expected — and being actively encouraged — to further increase over the next few years until humanity can collectively realize Jeff Bezos’ dream of building a low Earth orbit mixed-use business park.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
