By akademiotoelektronik, 15/01/2023

ISS: planned for 2024, what is the future of the orbital station?

The International Space Station (ISS), one of the most expensive megastructures in history, orbit in space for decades more than 340 kilometers from our heads.And she will remain there for the moment, even if her future is still uncertain.With the program stopped by NASA in 2024, what will happen to the orbital station?

The international space station is a space station placed in low terrestrial orbit, the fruit of a program launched and piloted by NASA, jointly with the Russian federal space agency, with the participation of European, Japanese and Canadian space agencies.Permanently occupied by an international crew - including Thomas Pesquet, recently promoted commander - who is dedicated to scientific research in the space environment.

Over the past twenty years, the international space station has been the second home of humanity: it has welcomed hundreds of astronauts, from 18 countries.It served as a platform for scientific experiences that have fundamentally changed our understanding of human biology, climate change and the universe in itself.

It was also a test field for futuristic technologies such as quantum communication terminals and favored the birth of a more dynamic commercial space industry.ISS is an unprecedented creation, but all good things have an end.So what will happen once NASA has formalized the program stop?

What future for the international space station?

With an orbit assembly started in 1998 and a construction that ended in 2011, the ISS is unfortunately not eternal.Despite the interest of long stays in space, the cost of maintaining operations (about $ 3 billion a year for NASA), components' obsolescence (the deadline for theoretical use begins in 2013 for modulesthe oldest) and other parameters implicated, its time is near.

NASA and the agency's international partners guaranteed ISS support until 2024, and some supporters of the Congress advocated to extend the budget of the agency's space station until 2028.The continuation is to guess, but there is a good chance that this implies the rebate of the ISS, by rather using private commercial space stations.

Some time ago, the agency declared the ISS open to business on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange.The Trump administration launched the idea of a grant to help the ISS transition to a commercial operator.The logic is simple: NASA officials want to build lunar bases and send astronauts to Mars, which is difficult to do when the agency has to pay almost a fifth of its annual budget to keep the lights on on the'ISS.

See also: SpaceX: The most beautiful pictures of the ISS replenishment mission

However, NASA needs a research platform with low terrestrial orbit to test technologies that will keep humans alive on other worlds.By relying on private industry to build and exploit new space stations, NASA can focus its efforts on the push of humans more deeply in space.

In 2020, NASA, for example, granted Axiom Space the right to attach one of its own crew modules at ISS.The company's plan is to launch its first module to the space station by 2024 and develop from there, with other modules planned in the future.The company provides, in the long term, to install up to 4 modules, which will then be separated to form a new space station, independent.

Without the interest of private companies, the ISS will be disoriented: it will be necessary to carry out its dismantling and to control its atmospheric return, so that the debris reaching the ground are of limited size and fall into uninhabited areas.The resort of the station is the responsibility of NASA.Different scenarios are being studied, with an estimated cost of $ 2 billion.

Regarding the following, NASA has also already planned the construction of a lunar orbital station, the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, which should be assembled during the 2020.It will ultimately aim to allow shipments with crew to lunar soil (Artemis program) and inhabited missions to Mars.And during this time, China has already launched Tianhe, the first module of its future space station…

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3. La Nasa dévoile un cliché époustouflant de l’ISS passant devant le soleil