Saurabh Singh
The International Space Station (ISS) is a modular space station in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada). The ownership and use of the space station is established by intergovernmental treaties and agreements. The station serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which scientific research is conducted in astrobiology, astronomy, meteorology, physics, and other fields. The ISS is suited for testing the spacecraft systems and equipment required for possible future long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars. As per NASA, space station weighs about a million pounds on earth. It is of same size as an American football field. The space craft can support a crew of six people, along with visitors. It comprises of laboratory modules from United States, Japan, Russia, and Europe.
• ISS has been orbiting Earth at a speed of around 8 km/second, for more than two decades. International crew of astronauts and cosmonauts onboard have been conducting ground-breaking scientific investigations that have opened doors for deep space exploration.The ISS was originally intended to be a laboratory, observatory, and factory while providing transportation, maintenance, and a low Earth orbit staging base for possible future missions to the Moon, Mars, and asteroids. However, not all of the uses envisioned in the initial memorandum of understanding between NASA and Roscosmos have been realised. In the 2010 United States National Space Policy, the ISS was given additional roles of serving commercial, diplomatic, and educational purposes.
• The ISS, about the size of an American football field, orbits the Earth about once 90 minutes, and has been continuously occupied by astronauts since November 2000. Last September, a Russian official warned that small cracks had been discovered on the space station that could worsen over time and raised concerns about ageing equipment and the risk of “irreparable failures”. The space station was originally intended to operate for just 15 years, but NASA said in a report that “there is high confidence that ISS life can be further extended through 2030” through some analyses of its viability are still being conducted.
• According to the Outer Space Treaty, the United States and Russia are legally responsible for all modules they have launched. Several possible disposal options were considered: Natural orbital decay with random reentry (as with Skylab), boosting the station to a higher altitude (which would delay reentry), and a controlled targeted de-orbit to a remote ocean area. In late 2010, the preferred plan was to use a slightly modified Progress spacecraft to de-orbit the ISS. This plan was seen as the simplest, cheapest and with the highest margin.
• OPSEK was previously intended to be constructed of modules from the Russian Orbital Segment after the ISS is decommissioned. The modules under consideration for removal from the current ISS included the Multipurpose Laboratory Module (Nauka), launched in July 2021, and the other new Russian modules that are proposed to be attached to Nauka. These newly launched modules would still be well within their useful lives in 2024.
• At the end of 2011, the Exploration Gateway Platform concept also proposed using leftover USOS hardware and Zvezda 2 as a refueling depot and service station located at one of the Earth-Moon Lagrange points. However, the entire USOS was not designed for disassembly and will be discarded. In February 2015, Roscosmos announced that it would remain a part of the ISS programme until 2024. Nine months earlier—in response to US sanctions against Russia over the annexation of Crimea—Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin had stated that Russia would reject a US request to prolong the orbiting station’s use beyond 2020, and would only supply rocket engines to the US for non-military satellite launches.
• On 28 March 2015, Russian sources announced that Roscosmos and NASA had agreed to collaborate on the development of a replacement for the current ISS. Igor Komarov, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos, made the announcement with NASA administrator Charles Bolden at his side. In a statement provided to SpaceNews on 28 March, NASA spokesman David Weaver said the agency appreciated the Russian commitment to extending the ISS, but did not confirm any plans for a future space station.
• On 30 September 2015, Boeing’s contract with NASA as prime contractor for the ISS was extended to 30 September 2020. Part of Boeing’s services under the contract will relate to extending the station’s primary structural hardware past 2020 to the end of 2028. There have also been suggestions that the station could be converted to commercial operations after it is retired by government entities.
• In July 2018, the Space Frontier Act of 2018 was intended to extend operations of the ISS to 2030. This bill was unanimously approved in the Senate, but failed to pass in the U.S. House. In September 2018, the Leading Human Spaceflight Act was introduced with the intent to extend operations of the ISS to 2030, and was confirmed in December 2018. In January 2022, NASA announced a planned date of January 2031 to de-orbit the ISS and direct any remnants into a remote area of the South Pacific Ocean.
• The ISS has been described as the most expensive single item ever constructed. As of 2010, the total cost was US$150 billion. This includes NASA’s budget of $58.7 billion ($89.73 billion in 2021 dollars) for the station from 1985 to 2015, Russia’s $12 billion, Europe’s $5 billion, Japan’s $5 billion, Canada’s $2 billion, and the cost of 36 shuttle flights to build the station, estimated at $1.4 billion each, or $50.4 billion in total. Assuming 20,000 person-days of use from 2000 to 2015 by two- to six-person crews, each person-day would cost $7.5 million, less than half the inflation-adjusted $19.6 million ($5.5 million before inflation) per person-day of Skylab.
• Mission control will first lower its altitude and it will start its descent into ‘South Pacific Oceanic Uninhabited Area (SPOUA)’, in an area called Point Nemo. Operators of ISS will perform ISS re-entry burn and provide the final push to lower ISS. Point Nemo is a sort of space cemetery, where decommissioned space debris are often brought to rest. It is located at a distance of 2,700 km from any land. The place has been named after a character in Jules Verne’s novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. ISS will be replaced by one or more commercially-owned and commercially-operated space platforms.
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