What will replace the International Space Station in 2031?
Weather of Arabia - What will happen when we lose the International Space Station in 2031, after it was present in our lives for more than two decades?
The services of the International Space Station ISS will end within eight years, but this end need not be a sad, dreary and dramatic end.
The International Space Station project began in 1998 with the launch of the Russian Zarya module, the first component of the station.
The station witnessed the cooperation of a number of countries to build the largest human building in space. Most significantly, it brought about a partnership between two warring rivals—the United States and Russia—after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union.
It was really a great story of post-Cold War cooperation. The Russian space industry was in tatters. This was an opportunity for the United States and Russia to inaugurate this era. The new collaboration.
The result was a massive space station the size of a football field and weighing more than 400 tons, orbiting our planet at 18,000 mph (28,980 km/h), at a cost of more than $150 billion (£120 billion). It has been continuously inhabited since the arrival of the first crew in November 2000. However, the station's hardware has aged, so it will re-enter the atmosphere in 2031 and crash into the ocean.
Construction of the ISS began in 1998, with the Russian-built Zarya module being the first component (Credit: Nasa)
Thousands of scientific experiments have been conducted on the International Space Station, from both the United States and Russia, and European and Japanese-made units have been added to the station as well. Research has included investigating diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, studying new states of matter, and developing ways to grow food in space such as lettuce and radishes.
“It was a really cool experience,” says Frank de Winne, an ESA astronaut who visited the station twice, in 2002 and 2009. “It's an unforgettable experience in life, to work in international partnership and move humanity forward.”
Not everyone agrees that the International Space Station has been so successful. Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal in the United Kingdom, says the price he paid alone for the scientific dividend was too high. "It certainly wasn't just a purely scientific innovation," he says. He suggests that countries should focus more on robotic missions, such as the hugely successful James Webb Space Telescope or ongoing missions to Mars. "Sending people into space is very expensive," he says. "I think the future of human spaceflight is about billionaires and adventurers."
The money that NASA saves from not having to pay for the ISS each year can go into other projects such as the Artemis program (Credit: NASA)
And in Earth's orbit, there are hopes that new commercial space stations will replace the International Space Station. Indeed, NASA has assigned the task of transporting humans to low Earth orbit to SpaceX and Boeing in the United States.
NASA has also begun awarding contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to companies to develop new space stations - these could be small research laboratories or tourist destinations, keeping humanity in orbit around the planet.
For NASA, reducing the burden of nearly three billion dollars on the International Space Station each year will allow the space agency to turn its attention to other goals in space exploration, specifically sending astronauts to the moon and Mars again.
NASA is currently working on the Artemis program, which aims to return to the lunar surface. And in 2024, four astronauts will fly around the moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
The ISS is the most expensive object humanity has ever produced - and few want to crash the entire thing into the ocean (Credit: NASA)
NASA also wants to build a new space station near the moon, known as the Lunar Gateway, with the help of international partners. Construction of this station is likely to begin later this decade.
This new station will not be the size of the International Space Station, but it will nevertheless serve as a mainstay in future human journeys to the moon and beyond in space bodies, to serve as a base from which astronauts travel to and from the moon.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
In conclusion, there is a possibility that the International Space Station will not be completely destroyed. Some companies fear that completely dropping the International Station from its orbit may represent a waste, saying that some of its components can be recycled and used again in the space industries.
However, NASA has not yet announced its openness to such proposals, although it may change its mind in this regard as the date of dropping the station from its orbit approaches.
But one way or another, the curtain will fall on the International Space Station project once and for all in 2031, whether this is done by completely destroying the entity or by dismantling it and recycling its parts.
The International Space Station will be replaced by other smaller space stations that are ready to complete the human journey in Earth orbit.
The International Space Station will leave a great legacy, but this legacy as large as it may be recorded in the annals of history as just the beginning on the road.
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