Operation Fetch the Space Station: NASA announces audacious $1bn plan to tow the ISS to Earth on the back of a spaceship – then slingshot it into the Pacific Ocean

NASA has unveiled its $1 billion plan to crash the International Space Station (ISS) back to Earth.

The space agency will dismantle the orbiting laboratory in 2031 due to stresses on the structure that have built up over time.

NASA will pay any company that creates a “space tug” design, a craft powerful enough to pull the ISS out of orbit and send it back to our planet.

The agency calls the space tug a US Deorbit Vehicle (USDV), which will push the ISS from 280 kilometers above the Earth’s surface to approximately 120 kilometers, where it will begin its final descent into the Pacific Ocean.

Proposals are due by November 17, and the ISS retirement plan will begin in 2026, when NASA will allow the spacecraft to decay naturally.

The first step of the plan is to wreck the ship and not re-energize it, leaving it in orbit.

During this time, atmospheric drag will reduce the orbit from about 250 miles above the surface to 200 miles.

However, this will take several years.

In 2030, the ISS crew will make the final descent to Earth, taking with them all crucial equipment.

The ISS will continue to get closer to Earth, reaching the ‘Point of no return’ at 280 kilometers above the surface.

And this is where the $1 billion space tug will swoop in and give the ISS a little push out of space.

The station will re-enter between 75 miles and 50 miles above the surface.

The external skin of modules will melt away, and then the exposed hardware will vaporize as the ISS floats through Earth’s atmosphere at 30,000 kilometers per hour.

Any material that survives the reentry will end up in Point Nemo, a region of the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and South America that is often used as a burial ground for spacecraft – at least 260 craft are buried there.

“The Space Station Decommissioning Plan is the implementation of a responsible, controlled, and targeted decommissioning to a remote ocean region,” NASA shared in a statement.

The space agency will dismantle the orbiting laboratory in 2031 due to stresses on the structure that have built up over time

During the descent through Earth’s atmosphere, the space station would burn up, disintegrate and vaporize into fragments of varying sizes.

‘Some fragments would likely survive the thermal stresses of re-entry. The environmental impacts of these fragments within the expected impact area are expected to be small.

“To best protect people and property on Earth, the most remote areas of the ocean are being targeted.”

President Ronald Regan announced the construction of the ISS during his State of the Union address on January 25, 1984, noting that NASA will complete it within ten years.

Then, on December 4, 1998, the first American part of the ship was launched, and it was officially commissioned two years later.

The station has received more than 250 visitors from 20 countries since the arrival of the first crew in November 2000.

NASA originally planned to dismantle the ISS after fifteen years of use, but that timeline has now been exceeded.

But the giant orbiting laboratory is showing wear and tear, forcing NASA to say goodbye to its faithful ship.

The station’s safe destination is the shared responsibility of the five space agencies – including NASA, CSA (Canadian Space Agency), (ESA) European Space Agency, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and the State Space Corporation Roscosmos.

Each is responsible for the management and control of the hardware they supply.

The station is designed to be interdependent and relies on contributions from across the partnership.

The US, Japan, Canada and ESA participating countries have committed to operate the station until 2030 and Russia until at least 2028.

NASA said it has explored several options to dismantle the ISS, including dismantling it and returning it to Earth, moving it to a higher orbit to remain in space or leaving it in orbit to rot until it randomly ends up the earth falls.

The other options fail because the structure is not designed to be easily disassembled in space, the spacecraft must be re-boosted to remain in orbit, and allowing it to decay in orbit could pose risks .

NASA does not want the retirement of the ISS to mean the end of its hold on space and has already launched a replacement factory.

The US space agency doesn’t want to lose access to these benefits if the station ends, so it has launched a transition plan, asking private companies to develop a space station.

Several companies want to operate a commercial channel, including Axiom Space, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Northrup Grumman.

“The International Space Station is entering its third and most productive decade as a groundbreaking science platform in microgravity,” said Robyn Gatens, director of the International Space Station at NASA Headquarters.

“This third decade is one of the achievements, building on our successful global partnership to verify exploration and human research technologies to support deep space exploration, continue to deliver medical and environmental benefits to humanity, and lay the foundation for a commercial future in low-Earth orbit.