The International Space Station turns 25 today, Monday, amid some security concerns about its current operation and with many doubts about its future, which NASA does not foresee beyond 2030. A quarter of a century of international cooperation in space in This project, led by two superpowers like the United States and Russia that compete on Earth, is an unprecedented success in the history of humanity; But those silver jubilees are being overshadowed by recent breakdowns, such as the recurring leaks of toxic gases in the radiators of one of the Russian modules.
On October 9, flakes of frozen ammonia, which is used as a coolant, were detected emanating from an exterior radiator of the module Nauka. NASA assured within a few hours, it’s a statementthat despite that very toxic emanation “the station crew was never in danger” and, two weeks later, the Russians Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub They managed to isolate the leak during a spacewalk. In addition to these two cosmonauts, two American women, one Japanese, another Russian, and, at the head of the crew, the Danish commander Andreas Mogensen, now live on the ISS (English acronym for the International Space Station). A total of 7 astronauts, who make up the so-called Expedition 70.
The radiator with that recent ammonia leak had been transferred last April from another module of the station, and the problem adds to two similar incidents in recent months, which the Russian space agency Roscosmos attributed to micrometeorite impacts. One of them affected a Soyuz spacecraft in December 2022 intended to bring back three cosmonauts, who had to remain on the ISS for another six months. Normally, each crew member spends six months on the station.
These radiators are the latest source of concern, after several air leaks in 2020 and a failure of software in the module Naukawhich caused a tilt change of the entire space station upon docking with it in July 2021. Nauka It is the last section added to the ISS, whose construction began on November 20, 1998, when the first module, the Russian Zarya, was placed into orbit. Two weeks later, the American Unity module was attached to it and the November 2, 2000 the Expedition 1 crew arrived. Thus began an uninterrupted human presence at the station, which continues 23 years later.
The project continues despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022. In fact, it is one of the few lines of Russian-American collaboration that have remained open since then. The international sanctions on Russia, derived from this conflict, are a reason for added tension with the United States and the rest of the ISS partners – the European Space Agency (ESA) and those of Japan and Canada -, which makes it difficult to plan the future. of the project.
However, a year before the start of the Ukrainian war, Russia He had indicated that his intention was to retire of the ISS from 2025 because its operation period had already expired and its condition left much to be desired. Initially conceived to be operational for 15 years, it will eventually double that useful life if NASA’s plans, which it has ensured to have, are met. financing to keep it operational until 2030.
The challenge of deorbiting the station
The ISS would continue like this, until the end of this decade, being a huge international laboratory in orbit, as NASA Administrator Bill Nelson highlighted in December 2021. when announcing the extension of the project: “The International Space Station is a beacon of peaceful scientific collaboration; and for more than 20 years, it has returned an enormous amount of scientific, technological and educational developments for the benefit of humanity.” Furthermore, Russia has not formally informed its partners that it is leaving the project; Rather, on the contrary, he has pointed out that it could continue until 2028 if the shared flight program prospers, so that Russian cosmonauts can fly to the ISS on American ships (and US astronauts, on Russian rockets).
The end of the ISS will be an unprecedented challenge, as will its construction, which has made it the most expensive thing ever created by humanity. Due to its size, with a length of more than 100 meters and a weight of 94 tons, it is completely ruled out to let it fall uncontrolled, as is done with satellites and other smaller space stations (for example, the skylab of the USA in 1978). NASA’s current plans involve an operation similar to that of the re-entry of the Russian station Mir in 2001. As on that occasion, the ISS will end up submerged in the Pacific Ocean, but with the added difficulty of being four times larger. To safely descend the International Space Station, a specific ship will have to be built, the total cost of which is estimated at $1 billion over this decade. For now, NASA has only begun to test the US aerospace industry looking for proposals to tackle this colossal project.
Even less clear is the plan for the transition to private space stations, which the US and Europe are working on. In fact, a NASA safety committee has just expressed concern about the timing and financial sustainability of private projects, which are intended to produce and operate the various stations that will be necessary to replace the ISS. “This transition requires a high-level framework and a very tight schedule. The absence of a clear and robust business plan for commercial stations is concerning, which compromises the viability and safety of NASA’s entire plan for low Earth orbit,” said David West, member of the NASA committee meeting on October 26.
The heiresses: private stations
The US space agency is financing the design of several private station projects, in order to continue keeping its astronauts in orbit uninterruptedly. One of them is Orbital Reef, a joint initiative of Blue Origin (the space company of Jeff Bezos, president of Amazon) and Sierra Space, which promise to have their station operational in 2027; However, both companies have shown public disagreements, are prioritizing other space projects and do not even have a team hired for this one. Orbital Reef would be a space business center. Rival with that project the starlaban orbital research center that is planned to begin operations in 2028, and to which the European Space Agency (ESA) has just joined.
Both projects aim to exploit the business opportunity of having factories and research laboratories in zero gravity. It is also the case of Axiom, another company that has an even closer collaboration with NASA. He has created the spacesuit for the astronauts of the upcoming Artemis missions to the Moon; And furthermore, in 2022, Axiom already took the first mission of private astronauts to the International Space Station, who stayed there for two weeks of space tourism. Axiom plans to add four modules to the ISS, starting in 2026. Later, those modules will undock from the station before it is sent to sink into the Pacific Ocean and begin operating as an independent space station.
According to this project, the International Space Station would have a daughter just before dying. But the ISS may still have an extra life left. In a symposium held last November 2, Ken Bowersox, NASA associate administrator for space operations, noted that “it is not mandatory to retire the space station in 2030. Our intention is to move to new commercial stations when they become available.” It is one more indication that NASA does not see the projects to replace the ISS as sufficiently advanced.
In fact, NASA also considers the possibility that its vehicle to deorbit it will not be ready until 2035. While the US space agency’s plans to deorbit the ISS have just been finalized, other proposals are emerging. At the end of Bowersox’s speech, a space policy expert suggested the opposite idea: raise the International Space Station to a stable orbit when its useful life endsso that it remains a monument to space cooperation, visible from Earth as a faint artificial star.
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