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after over 20 years in orbit our beloved International Space Station is set to retire in 2030 but remember please don't shoot the messenger here like its epic debut the iss's final performance will digest his mindblowing so how exactly do you decommission a football field size structure without hitting anything but before we get to that I know you must all be wondering why NASA and its Partners decided to decommission the ISS now well the ISS is starting to show its age I mean think about it's been in a constant state of operation since November 2000 it orbits the earth every 90 minutes traveling at 8 km/ Second and it's hosted over 3,000 research investigations from 108 countries not to mention it's in one of the most
dangerous environments known to humankind in constant danger of being struck by debris based on evaluations the ISS is expected to continue operations until 2028 some major reasons for retirement were the operational CA 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 just let it float out in space forever well there's a long list of reasons we don't want that one of them is because the Kesler syndrome which is the concept that even the smallest fragment of space debris traveling at speeds up to 28 million
kmph hour 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 pool by slowly reducing the operational altitude of the ISS over several years Engineers will strategically positioned as re-entry point over a region known as the South Pacific Oceanic uninhabited area AKA 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 re-entry with only select Parts making it to point Nemo and this location it's optimal because it's within the South Pacific jar 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 but the ISS won't be alone it will join over 200 50 others dating back to NASA's Skylab in 1979 and Russia's Mir space station in 2001 this is the start of a new era for space exploration and crude missions beyond the Earth's orbit NASA hopes to maintain operations in low earth orbit by introducing a new private space station before the ISS retires in early 2021 NASA selected three companies blue
origin nanorx LLC and north of Grumman to develop the next generation of commercial space stations Nan Rax currently has their site set on 2027 as the first flight of Starlet their new commercial space station as for the ISS the world is deeply saddened to see what some would call their first experience with human space travel but all good things come to an end no matter how bit sweet and with other projects not too far behind it seems like we're already headed toward continuing the legacy of the ISS by going even further than we've ever been before so what was your favorite thing about the ISS let us know down in the comments make sure to subscribe and thanks for watching
