NASA sends Musk into orbit with millions

The space is becoming more and more crowded. While Boeing’s Starliner shuttle, affected by numerous technical problems, saw its return to Earth from the International Space Station which currently hosts nine astronauts – six Americans and three Russians – canceled indefinitely – NASA announced that it had taken a fundamental step in view of the safe and controlled deorbiting of the ISS by choosing Elon Musk’s SpaceX as a partner.

NASA TRUSTS ELON MUSK

It will be SpaceX, which has just successfully tested its Starship, to provide the vehicle which, in about six years, or around 2030, will scrap the historic “space home” of the astronauts.

Or, to put it in technical language, SpaceX will have to deal with the “deorbit” of the ISS, therefore it will have to “brake” the fall of the Space Station and guide it in its final descent towards Earth, ensuring that it disintegrates in the atmosphere at a speed of over 27,000 kilometers per hour, concluding over 30 years (in 2030 it will be 32) of an honored career among fireworks and star dust.

DETAILS OF THE OPERATION

Musk’s SpaceX order is worth $843 million, although NASA has not yet specified whether its international partners will help cover the costs of the project. This is a mission that has its risk profiles, since Elon Musk’s company will have to ensure that the destruction of the ISS takes place far from populated areas of our planet.

THE RISKS

Although the International Space Station is smaller than a speck of dust compared to the mass of our planet, the ISS weighs over 400,000 kilograms, a significantly greater mass than the 2,600 kilograms of spent batteries that deorbited in 2021, which nevertheless did not burn up completely in Earth’s atmosphere, hitting the roof of a house in Florida. The reentry of the International Space Station will therefore have to have the right trajectory to ensure that the ISS offers the greatest possible resistance against the atmosphere, completely disintegrating.

THE TROUBLES OF THE STARLINER

NASA’s decision naturally represents a great opportunity for the reality set up by Musk. But even the numerous problems with the engines and the helium losses of the Starliner which pushed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to postpone the departure of the shuttle (we are talking about July) benefit the owner of Tesla, given that the Boeing vehicle is in direct competition with SpaceX’s “Crew Dragon”.

NASA TAKES OFF THE SPACEX EVALUATION

The company, valued at 180 billion dollars in a transaction dating back to December, has seen its value increase to almost 210 billion dollars in recent hours, according to sources cited by Bloomberg.

The new valuation, achieved as part of an offering aimed at employees and internals, in which SpaceX shares were offered at $112 each, represents a record for a private American company, but is still lower than the $268 billion dollars from ByteDance, the Chinese software house best known for TikTok.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ISS

But the real star of the news is the International Space Station, although SpaceX stole the show. The ISS was completed in 2011 but its construction began in 1998, with the Russian Zarya module, launched on November 20 of that year, financed by the United States with 220 million dollars (162 million euros) and built thanks to the efforts of five space agencies: in addition to the Russian one and NASA, also the ESA and the Canadian and Japanese agencies. Only two years later it had all the functions suitable for hosting astronauts. The first were Yuri Gidzenko, William Shepherd and Sergei Krikalev. While the first ESA astronaut was the Italian Umberto Guidoni.

Among the most difficult moments for space exploration, we must certainly remember the Columbia accident, on February 1, 2003, with the shuttle disintegrating in the atmosphere during the return flight from the ISS while carrying seven astronauts. Following those events, for many months the ISS was forced to survive only thanks to supplies from the Russian Soyuz shuttles, until 2006, when assembly resumed with the Space Shuttle Atlantis.

HOW MANY TRIBULATIONS ON BOARD THE ISS

In recent times, however, the team of astronauts aboard the International Space Station has repeatedly complained about the presence of water in NASA’s “Emu” space suits, a problem that should accelerate the retirement of the current technology used to perform spacewalks.

Following a similar incident in March 2022, there was a seven-month halt in extravehicular activities. But apparently NASA’s “space tailors” have not yet managed to solve this problem that our Luca Parmitano of ESA also ran into.