NASA Just Picked SpaceX To Deorbit The International Space Station

For more than two decades the International Space Station has been orbiting Earth. In that time, it has helped NASA among other agencies have consistent access to low Earth orbit, but it has also cost them quite a bit. It’s estimated that the floating laboratory costs the agency around $3 billion every year, which accounts for roughly a third of the total human spaceflight budget.

With that in mind, NASA has also been working toward its eventual decommissioning, which is expected to happen in 2030, where they purposely deorbit the station, burning up in the atmosphere. Just today however we finally learned what company will be helping in that unique process with a specially designed vehicle. Here I will go more in-depth into the agency picking SpaceX, what type of de-orbit vehicle we can expect, future replacements, and more.

Credit:

Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:42 - NASA Picks SpaceX

[MadJustin]

But will starliner still be attached to the ISS when they deorbit 🤔🤔🤔

[PaulMaillet]

Boeing has far more experience making things crash and burn. SpaceX will end up landing the ISS safely in TX.

[greenrocket]

RIP ISS, I'm glad we have lived through a time where something like this was possible.

[cobaltuniversedotnet]

I wonder how long it will take Blue Origin to sue for the ISS contract.

[drfranks]

really? when destruction is on the menu, they failed to pick Boeing ? This timeline is bonkers.

[JontyLevine]

I know recovering the station intact is not an option, but I really wish they could save one little piece of it. The cupola is the ideal candidate for this, as it has the most sentimental value of any ISS module. And they could set it up in a museum with a big-screen projection of Earth behind it so little kids could observe the planet through the very same sheets of glass that real astronauts looked through.

[dillonbledsoe]

Wouldn't it be freaking sick if they put livestream cameras up everywhere inside of the station?

[Khemani_RL]

I think Boeing would be a better candidate for this mission. Boeing knows a thing or two about destructing things 🤷🏾‍♂️

[NonBinary_Star]

who else read the title thinking .. Starliner effed up so bad that SpaceX has to go deorbit the entire ISS..? 😂

[ARWest-bpyb]

That's going to be one epic fireball!💥💥

[nottrevorallen]

3:59 uninhibited ocean be like "hey stop throwing all that shit in me bro"

[NS-tnth]

Be nice to have a Starship dock with the ISS and offload as much as possible

[mustang]

So what would it take to send the international space station to orbit the moon?

[dirtylabrat]

Why not boost the ISS away from earth for future historians to recover for education and nostalgia?

[lanzer]

Poor decision. They could had just picked Boeing to build a Starliner Max and load it up with the last MCAS software version. :)

[TimJSwan]

They had better place cameras inside and upload stream the video to starlink so we can see its last moments inside.

[Wisald]

2030 sounds like a stretch considering how badly ISS is aging

[Mexzot]

Given the cost of putting that much mass into space, why don’t they shove it to the moon!?

If there is a moonbase in the future, it will be useful raw materials and perhaps some value in whatever survives.

[CountArtha]

I know you meant to say *"uninhabited region"* instead of *"uninhibited, "* but now I'm picturing it coming down over Las Vegas or some such place.

[wheelz]

It would be cool to bring it back down module by module just because of the work that was put into getting the station up into orbit and the money spent on maintaining it but I understand that sending up a vehicle to push it toward a trajectory where it will de-orbit and burn up is cheaper