Rome, 27 June 2024 – SpaceXElon Musk’s space company, has been chosen by NASA to carry out an important new mission: the construction of a space aircraft which in 2030 will be used to crash and destroy the International Space Station (ISS). The American space agency itself announced it in a note.
A delicate task
NASA and other space agencies involved in maintaining the ISS have long been considering the safest way to destroy the space station, whose life, extended thanks to European contributions until 2030, is now coming to an end. Among the options considered, disassembly into a series of smaller components, transport away from Earth and from its orbit, destruction by controlled reentry into our planet’s atmosphere and finally fall into an ocean, as far away as possible from inhabited centers. And it is precisely this last option that was chosen by the American space agency.
The International Space Station with Earth in the background (photo by NASA)
In order to complete this extremely delicate mission in maximum safety and efficiency, a suitable aircraft which will have to hook up with the station, which weighs 430 thousand kilos, and accompany it in a controlled descent. During this last flight, the ISS will be destroyed: the less resistant parts will disintegrate on contact with the atmosphere, while the more resistant ones will end up in some remote region of an ocean.
To select the company to build this new spacecraft, a tender was announced that was won by Elon Musk’s company, which was awarded a contract worth 843 million dollars. The choice of this method of destruction and of SpaceX for the spacecraft project was explained by Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations: “The choice of a vehicle for the deorbit maneuver of the International Space Station will help NASA and its international partners to ensure a safe transition into low Earth orbit at the end of the station’s operations. This decision also supports plans for future commercial stations and enables the uninterrupted use of near-Earth space.”
Space X
SpaceX, founded by billionaire Elon Musk in 2002 with the aim of opening up space exploration to private individuals and enabling the colonization of Mars, over the last twenty years it has become a key partner of NASA and many other space agencies around the world. Currently, just to name a few of the many programs in which it is involved, SpaceX has several contracts with NASA, such as the one for i replenishments to Iss and the one for satellite launches, and deals with the development of the Falcon 9 rockets and the Dragon capsules.
The International Space Station
In yesterday’s note regarding plans for its end, Ken Bowersox said that the ISS “will remain a model for science, exploration and international collaboration in space.” Conceived and designed between the 80s and 90s, the Space Station is the result of a international cooperation unprecedented: Americans, Canadians, Japanese, English and, since 1993, Russians have taken part. After the invasion of Ukraine, the space station is practically the only field in which the US and Russia have continued to coexist and collaborate peacefully. The ISS has been in orbit since 1998 and has been used to study countless aspects of space exploration and conduct numerous scientific experiments.
