Must come to an end…
Much like the ‘sunsetting’ of the shuttles, now it’s the ISS.
The International Space Station is celebrating its 25th birthday — even as NASA prepares to put it out to pasture.
In a live-streamed talk pegged to the quarter-century anniversary of the ISS, the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the floating habitat took questions about a variety of topics, including the detritus that’s accumulated in the station’s Unity Module, the look of lightning from above the Earth, and the spirit of international cooperation.
Full article HERE, from the BYTE.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been up there for 25 years, it seems like ‘yesterday’ that it was launched to much fanfare!
From very humble beginnings, but bigger than MIR, it has grown over the years into an international success, allowing multiple countries to put astronauts in space to do many scientific experiments, and given the world a new perspective on what really happens in long term space flight to the human body.
No one seems to know what is actually coming next as far as space habitats, but the ‘leaning’ is toward ‘private’ industry…
I vaguely remember when SkyLab de-orbited and burned up mostly of the Indian Ocean. It’s been a while …
Some portions (think Russian) have fared far worse than others (think American or Japanese.) But all parts of it (except for the new solar panel systems but including the latest Russian garbage) are all starting to experience… issues. Think Hubble, but living inside of it. Space is hard on stuff, people tend to forget that.
Now if we only had orbital smelting as an actual thing, rather than as sci-fi, we could mine the ISS and all the other defunct satellites and build stuff in orbit from orbital debris.
But, no, sadly we’re chucking it all away.
I’ve never seen it go overhead. Every time I tried the program was either way wrong or the weather refused to cooperate.
I’ve observed the ISS countless times. I use the tracking tool at n2yo.com and as I recall it has been spot-on every time. Enter your lat/lng and pull up a 10-day prediction schedule. It’s got all the info you need to track. (It can’t do anything for the wx, unfortunately).
It passes overhead here during the daytime. The few right now that are at night are at 4AM. So yeah, it’ll be directly overhead today around 1:30PM. Not much chance of seeing that.
I honestly suspect I’ll never see it.
I can’t believe they quoted UnScientific Non-American.
A billion dollars? Seriously? Just put ten pounds of HE at each joint, and in the middle of each module and BOOM! Very little of it will reach the Earth. Do it just as it starts to descend into the graveyard, but before it hits atmosphere. Then those really big hard chunks will be the only things hitting the ground.
Second option? Boost it up and out of orbit. That’d cost more though.
Third option? Nuke it.
Fourth? Put it up on ebay 🙂
TXRed- You are correct. But the Navy had to shoot down a Russian powerplant that was menacing land a few years ago…
Beans- Yep, it’s the micrometeorites and other things like expansion/contraction that wear it out.
John- Sometimes, you just have to get lucky! Snort… some fool would buy it off ebay…
Imagine, if you can, the world engulfed by a catastrophic, armageddon style catastrophe, and there, orbiting above us, are these manned space stations.
In time their crews die off and there they are, dead astronauts in orbit.
Scary, what?