The ISS Will Crash to Earth Soon, But Why?

NASA recently announced it will decommission the ISS by 2030. But what’s the plan for getting the football-field-sized station back to Earth?

Based on evaluations, the ISS is expected to continue operations until 2028. Some major reasons for retirement were the operational cost, which is roughly $4 billion per year, and limited onboard capabilities. On top of that, the ISS requires multiple reboost maneuvers each year to keep it from crashing back down to Earth.

So in 2030, when it’s finally time to decommission the ISS, why can’t we let it just float out in space forever? Well there’s a long list of reasons we don’t want that. One of them is because of the Kessler Syndrome, which is the concept that even the smallest fragment of space debris traveling at speeds up to 28 million km/hr can be a catalyst to a much larger chain reaction. But luckily, engineers have a plan to avoid that catastrophic domino effect by harnessing the Earth’s gravitational pull.

By slowly reducing the operational altitude of the ISS over several years, engineers will strategically position its reentry point over a region known as the South Pacific Oceanic Uninhabited Area. A.k.a. where satellites go to die. Known as Point Nemo, this area in the Pacific Ocean is quite literally in the middle of nowhere. Believe it or not, the closest humans to Point Nemo are the crew members of the ISS right now!

But the entire satellite will not crash into the ocean, in fact, experts expect most of the station to burn up in the atmosphere during reentry, with only select parts making it to Point Nemo. And this location is optimal because it’s within the South Pacific Gyre, a large system of rotating ocean currents that keeps this region fairly absent of oceanic life, in case anyone was concerned about any sea life.

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