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This Week’s Next-Gen Newsflash

🚀 India begins training national astronauts for mission to ISS

🛰️ China has launched the first units its next satellite megaconstellation

💸 Millions in contracts are at stake for NASA’s next lunar rover competition

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Today’s Subject of Space: Why the ISS is being destroyed

In 2031 the International Space Station is scheduled to be de-orbited and destroyed. Having just hit its 25th anniversary, the ISS has been continually crewed by humans for decades, performing cutting edge science in the frontier of space.

So why do the people that manage it, consisting of five space agencies across 15 different countries, want to destroy it? And what does that mean for the future of humanity among the stars?

For decades, the International Space Station has been the pinnacle of human achievement. A multinational collaboration to build and maintain a continually staffed scientific lab orbiting 250 miles above the planet, where the select few of humanity’s best and brightest are charged with conducting experiments and research that no one else can.

This machine is the most expensive single object ever built, with a price tag of over $150 billion dollars. No one pumps that kind of money into anything without expecting a massive payoff. So why, then, do its owners want to destroy such a capital intensive and historically significant monument to human ingenuity?

The simplest answer is that while the ISS has led to some amazing new scientific discoveries that will help future spacefarers and people on Earth alike, it is getting old. Having been designed off technology from the late nineties, and enduring decades of wear and tear, it’s not quite the sleek machine it used to be.

Just compare it to the design of China’s Tiangong space station, built off technology from the past ten years. The difference is stark. And with more maintenance issues each passing year, NASA and its Russian, Canadian, European, and Japanese partners have come to realize the growing risk that the ISS poses to its own crew.

And if more and more astronauts’ valuable time is being taken up by routine maintenance, then at a certain point, the ISS begins to lose its value. Its purpose, as a research lab.

The ISS may also pose a danger to others, if something catastrophic were to happen to it. It cannot stay in orbit on its own. It must frequently be re-boosted to maintain its orbit, and at the end of its scheduled lifespan, will be lowered into a controlled burn. This will minimize any risk the station might pose to people on Earth, dropping it into the remote Point Nemo in the Pacific Ocean, where it will join a weary grave with the Soviet Mir station, and 6 other defunct stations.

It’ll be a disappointing day, watching the ISS disintegrate in the atmosphere, ending what would be by that point over three decades of work. But that doesn’t mean the future of humanity in space is at an end. With the ISS gone, NASA and its partners will be free to focus their attention and funding toward the Artemis lunar base, missions to Mars, and who knows what other amazing projects?

And the station will have its worthy successors. By then, NASA’s lunar Gateway station is expected to be in operation, China will still have the Tiangong, and Russia is planning to build its own new station for the first time in nearly forty years.

And that’s not to mention the commercial stations as well, such as Axiom, Voyager Space’s Starlab, and Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef. Even SpaceX has hinted at re-outfitting Starship variants with the ability to serve as low-Earth-orbit stations.

All this, because despite its planned destruction, the ISS has delivered its massive payoff, worthy of that $150 billion dollars; unlocking new science and inspiring new generations to continue to venture into space. By the end of the decade, the number of space stations might rise from two, to potentially six multinational government and commercial labs, across both Earth AND the Moon.

And THAT is the future that the ISS stands for.

State of the New Space Economy

• Contracting budgets at NASA predict a need for smaller and cheaper satellites, offering lucrative contract opportunities for the right providers

• The Chang'e-5 probe, which returned to Earth on Dec. 17, 2020, retrieved 1,731 grams of lunar samples, consisting primarily of rocks and soil from the lunar surface, and Chinese scientists are abuzz

• By 2035, over 60% of economic demand for space goods and services will be driven by supply chain and transportation, leaving the remaining 40% for a thriving in-space economy of manufacturing, research, and tourism.

Top Space Creators to Follow in 2024

📸 Instagram: All Around Science (442k followers)

👔 LinkedIn: G. Pettit (11k followers)

✖️ X: Curiosity Rover (4.2m followers)

📽️ TikTok: AstroKobi (2.7m followers)

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