The Future of the International Space Station
Why America may be gone from the ISS sooner than you think
Costing NASA a whopping $4 billion a year just to keep it operational, the International Space Station is certainly no cheap endeavor for the government of the United States. Since the launch of its first module in November of 1998, the ISS has been an icon of human exploration. However, with the launch of its new Artemis Program, designed to get humans back on the lunar surface, NASA plans to stop their funding for the ISS.
Over the 20 years that astronauts have continously occupied the space station there have been a vast number of scientific experiments conducted there. Over the many years of existence hundreds of miles above the surface of the Earth the ISS has made many new inventions possible. To understand why the future of the ISS may be in jeopardy we must first look back at its history.
The Beginning of the International Space Station
Being the gigantic piece of technology it is, the ISS could not be built on the ground and flown up all at once. It needed to be built in 16 separate modules, with each of them being flown up by one of three rockets; the American Space Shuttle, the Russian Proton Rocket, or the Russian Soyuz Rocket. From 1998, it took about a decade for the space station to be deemed complete, and even then more modules were still being flown up to be attached.
As early as 1984, designs for an American space station were made public. Nine years later in 1993 after several other countries planned to contribute to the assembly of the station, it was made official under the name the International Space Station.
The first module to be sent up was the Russian Zarya, in November of 1998. By this time, the Russians had already experimented with launching their own, significantly smaller space stations. They had already launched the Salyut 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 as well as the famous Mir Station, all of which being occupied by humans for at least two weeks. Additionally, the Mir Station was occupied for a total of about 12 years.
Needless to say, the Russians knew a lot about sending capsules up into space. After Zarya was in orbit, the U.S. launched the Unity Node 1 Capsule. The docking of Zarya and Unity was a success, and it marked a pivotal point in both human spaceflight and international relations between the United States and Russia. Afterwards, many more missions were made to launch more modules into orbit and dock them with various parts of the station, slowly growing in size over the next 10 years.
Space Station Statistics
With a width of 358 feet and a length of 240 feet the International Space Station is about the size of an American football field. Granted, a decent amount of that area is taken up by the massive solar panels that harness the sun’s energy to power the station.
While it is an international endeavor funded by a variety of nations across the globe including Japan, Canada, and 22 separate European countries working together under the ESA (European Space Agency). However, the two nations with the most time and money put into the space station are the United States and Russia. To anyone who knows really anything about the history of spaceflight, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Since the Cold War and the well-known Space Race between the two global powers tensions have lessened, but there is still a divide between the two. The space station is primarily made up of two parts; the Russian Orbital Segment and the United States Orbital Segment. The astronauts on the station can freely move from one to the other without issues, but each nation has the responsibility of taking care of their own side.
From the end of the American Space Shuttle Program in July of 2011 until the recent SpaceX launch in May of 2020 all astronauts going to the space station had to hitch a ride on a Russian Soyuz rocket. NASA, the ESA (European Space Agency) and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) all shelled out significant amounts of money for their astronauts to have a seat on one of the Soyuz launches.
Why the United States May Be Leaving
As we know, NASA has poured a huge amount of their resources within the past 20 years to operating the International Space Station. While it’s certainly a good task, they’re looking to expand and develop a functioning moon base around the year 2040. To do this, they’re starting with a new program, Artemis, that will send humans back to the lunar surface for the first time in half a century.
For Artemis to be fully effective, NASA needs to allocate a large portion of their overall budget for development of the new gear, equipment, and rocket parts. This money has to come from somewhere, and NASA isn’t expecting the government to dramatically increase their funding anytime soon. Thus, they need to take from somewhere in the program, and here is where we get to the ISS.
NASA’s contract still obligates them to actively participate in the resupplying and sending of astronauts to the space station through the year 2024, and a possible extension until 2028 is still likely. However, NASA have publicly said that in the years following 2024 they will be starting to shift more and more of their budget to the Artemis Program.
The tricky bit is that the Russians are not so keen on backing out of the ISS just yet. They realize that over it’s lifetime the station has acquired wear and tear and cannot go on forever, but they do want to keep it operational for a bit longer than NASA plans to. And due to the fact that each country is legally obligated to manage their own modules, if the United States doesn’t want to take part in the operation of the ISS anymore they must deorbit their own modules.
How Will It End?
The most effective way of deorbiting capsules from the station is to individually disattach them from the rest of the ISS and send them back down through the atmosphere towards a point in the middle of the southern Pacific Ocean, called Point Nemo. Most of the materials will disintegrate upon reentry into the atmosphere but some will stay intact, which is why it’s essential to make sure they land far from human civilization. In fact, the area around Point Nemo has already been the site of many abandoned capsules coming down to earth, as it’s 1,000 miles away from the closest humans.
If the United States ends up deorbiting their capsules then the ISS will be significantly smaller, and Russia has tentatively said that they may consider taking their preexisting modules and adding other ones to make a new and improved space station.
Other Alternatives
Even though NASA is planning to leave the ISS, they still don’t want to see it completely gone. They’ve been looking into the possibility of private companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, or Boeing to take their place. However, the chances of any private companies taking up NASA’s offer are highly unlikely due to the fact that most of NASA’s capsules on the ISS are getting old and need to be replaced or redesigned.
A new private spaceflight company called Axiom Space is actually planning on designing and launching their own space station. However, they plan on attaching it to the ISS beforehand. Axiom is on schedule to attach their first module to the space station by 2024, and a few more connected afterwards. Once they have enough modules attached they hope to be completely self-sustaining and disattach from the ISS between 2028 and 2030.
They hope to have customers pay large sums of money for a chance to live in space for 8 days. Considering how some private space companies like SpaceX have already been able to make a large profit it’s a very distinct possibility that Axiom will create a private space station in the future.
The End of an Era
While it is sad to know that the ISS may be entirely deorbited within the next few years, we can still appreciate all the amazing things in its past. It brought five different space agencies comprising of 28 individual countries together in the pursuit of advancing science and technology as well as taking the next steps in human spaceflight and exploration.
The International Space Station will be remembered as a successful operation that paved the way for many new inventions and opportunities. As we look ahead at the future of space travel and NASA’s Artemis Program we can only hope it will have as positive an impact on space technologies and humanity as the ISS achieved.
