NASA’s final plans for the International Space Station when it is decommissioned at the end of the decade have been revealed as it asks for proposals for a new spacecraft that will be used to guide the station to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

According to current policy, NASA and most of its international partners intend to operate the ISS until 2030, by which time its basic structure will become too fatigued to continue to host astronauts safely. The problem is, how to dispose of the 100-tonne structure safely?

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Pushing it into a higher orbit isn’t feasible because of the enormous amounts of energy required to do so and the stresses that would be placed on the spacecraft that could cause it to break apart. The alternative is to carry out a controlled descent into the atmosphere where it will burn up and any surviving debris will fall into an uninhabited ocean region.

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