Featured Image Credit: Joe Raedle / Staff / Getty
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has suggested deorbiting the International Space Station within two years.
NASA has plans to crash the space station into the Pacific Ocean, which they aim to be done by the end of this decade, of which they have awarded a contract for $843 million to Musk's SpaceX.
Although NASA have stated they want to deorbit the space station by the end of the decade, Musk is now suggesting he would like to deorbit the ISS within as little as two years.
It is time to begin preparations for deorbiting the @Space_Station.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2025
It has served its purpose. There is very little incremental utility.
Let’s go to Mars.
As part of the mission to bring down the ISS, SpaceX will be developing a U.S. Deorbit vehicle that will be used to crash the space station back down to earth, where following a controlled re-entry, it should land safely in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.
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While Musk has publicly stated that the International Space Station "has very little incremental utility." stranded NASA astronaut Sunita Williams disagrees, claiming now isn't the right time to get rid of the space station. Not only has Williams argued that the ISS shouldn't be destroyed before 2030, she has also stated, "This place is ticking. It's just really amazing. So I would say we're actually in our prime right now.".
Contrary to Musk's statement about the station having served its purpose, Williams has suggested that NASA would be wasting tax payers money by not allowing the "word class science that this laboratory is capable of" to continue.
Suntia Williams is one of two stranded NASA astronauts currently stranded on the International Space Station. Williams and her fellow stranded astronaut Butch Wilmore were delayed in retuning home to earth following a technical glitch in Boeing's new Starliner capsule, but are expected to finally return home at the end of this month.
The ISS was originally launched back in November 1998 and has since grown to an impressive 16 modules, weighing more than a whopping 4,30,000 kg.
Due to the sheer size of the space station, the mission requires careful planning and precision to make sure the stations orbit is slowly lowered and steered away from populated areas and into the ocean.
Elon Musk might be looking to take the space station out of commission within the next two years, but with so much planning and development required to pull it off, and Suntia Williams calling for him to hold off, there's every chance the ISS could still be up in space until closer to NASA's 2030 deadline.
