The International Space Station—larger than a football field and weighing almost 450 tons—must eventually fall to Earth. It’s a delicate, dangerous process
It’s a shame they can’t move it to a higher orbit & leave it there for future generations. People a century or two from now will be curious about the earliest days of humans in space.
Depends how far they boost it up. Once it’s in MEO instead of LEO decay is less of a problem, and there would be ample time to achieve further boosts. For example the GPS satellites will take millenia to move considerably closer to earth.
The article actually mentions the idea, but apparently it’s bound to physically fall apart after a while, and it’s a big thing that could make a lot of debris. I guess you could put it in a net, but I’m not sure how cool a bundle of scrap that used to be the ISS is. The smart folks at NASA seem sure there’s no point.
It’s a shame they can’t move it to a higher orbit & leave it there for future generations. People a century or two from now will be curious about the earliest days of humans in space.
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Depends how far they boost it up. Once it’s in MEO instead of LEO decay is less of a problem, and there would be ample time to achieve further boosts. For example the GPS satellites will take millenia to move considerably closer to earth.
The article actually mentions the idea, but apparently it’s bound to physically fall apart after a while, and it’s a big thing that could make a lot of debris. I guess you could put it in a net, but I’m not sure how cool a bundle of scrap that used to be the ISS is. The smart folks at NASA seem sure there’s no point.
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