How much does it cost to decommission a space station? Well, according to NASA as cited by London’s Daily Mail, it will cost at least $1 billion to ensure the International Space Station (ISS) finds a safe spot to crash. And NASA even has a name for the spacecraft that will be needed to steer the ISS into the Earth – the US Deorbit Vehicle (USDV) – because everything needs an fancy acronym.
The ISS is not expected to disappear until 2031, but plans are underway to start the decommissioning process now. If you want to help build the USDV you have until November of this year to share your plans with NASA (see below and visit this link). Just as we have companies in a race to put humans on the Moon again, we will now have a race for the final days of the ISS.
And where will the ISS end up? In its Requiremenst for Request Information, NASA is asking for a “controlled reentry into an unpopulated region.” It appears the goal is to aim any burning remains at Point Nemo, which is a spot in the Pacific Ocean used many times for such purposes (see the diagram above).
The US apparently has plans for an ISS replacement. I just hope at least part of the new station is in orbit by 2031. We do not need a long gap with no space station. The gap between end of the space shuttle and the restart of US-controlled rocket missions to the ISS was far too long. We have time to get it right.
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