The ISS will no longer be (six years later). The station will be encountered from orbit and flooded in the ocean

This will be done by SpaceX Ilona Mask. The contract is concluded

The National Aeronautics Department of the US Cosmos (NASA) chose SpaceX Ilona Mask to develop and create an apparatus that will withdraw from orbit an International Space Station (ISS) after the end of its operation, the NASA press service reports.

According to the contract concluded between NASA and SpaceX, the cost of work will be about $ 850 million. Ilona Mask will only be responsible for the development of the apparatus - for the surgery to withdraw the ISS from the orbit, the NASA will be responsible.

The press release notes that the device, which is not known about nothing so far, will allow NASA and its international partners to ensure a “safe and responsible” withdrawal of the station from the orbit, excluding the risk of falling to the area where people live.

It is expected that the device, like the ISS itself, will collapse in the atmosphere of the Earth, the press release says. At the same time, BBC notes that the mass and size of the station (approximately from the football field) mean that some components of the ISS can survive at the entrance to the atmosphere.

The fragments of the station will have to fall into the Pacific Ocean. The spacecraft that have worked out their term is sent to the uninhabited section of the ocean, known as the “Ocean Pole of inaccessibility” or “Nemo Point”, which is more than 2500 kilometers from the nearest land section, writes BBC.

The ISS has been in orbit since 1998. Since then, its service life has been extended several times. In 2023, the United States, Japan, Canada and the member countries of the European Space Agency agreed to extend the life of the complex until 2030. Before that, Russia extended the life of the Russian segment of the station until 2028.

Over the entire time of work on board the ISS, more than three thousand scientific experiments were conducted, including in the study of the processes of aging of the human body and the development of new types of materials.

Despite the long term of operation, the station is still reliable, writes BBC.