NASA wants to focus on lunar and Mars operations. If they simply leave the ISS where it is, it'll eventually deorbit, maybe on someone's house (coincidentally some NASA space debris just did that and are being sued now over it)
Much better to drop it on Point Nemo (extremely remote location in the Pacific Ocean) on purpose.
It's definitely not, the ISS is constantly trying to return to earth, the energy it would take to choose where on earth would be small. Pushing it to escape velocity would be astronomical in terms of energy and effort, then it still has the problem of needing a stable orbit otherwise it's just going to crash again anyways
Probably cheaper to bring it down to Earth. Gravity is already doing most of the work.
I could be wrong but I think the earth still has a gravitational pull way further up than the space station is located.
So if they could generate enough energy to move it further away, It could end up coming back eventually. Our great great great grandchildren will deal with it lol.
The ISS is in LEO, which is technically still in our atmosphere. It’s beyond the Karman line so officially in space, but our atmosphere extends beyond that by quite a ways so it still experiences atmospheric drag, which slows it down over time and continues to decay its orbit. Technically in a 3-body problem Earth is exerting gravity to every known body and vice versa, and moving something far enough out of Earth’s gravity well for it to experience very little of our gravity is not an option.
Accelerating this huge station to move it well enough away from Earth is far more expensive than slowing it down a little to quickly deorbit it to a safe location on Earth. Most of it will burn up before reaching the surface of Earth, but some pieces will remain that could crash down onto someone so a safe deorbit is necessary. There’s also nuclear components on the ISS, which by protocol must be “disposed” of properly, which includes crashing it into Point Nemo. There’s a fair amount of nuclear material below the sea there.
Your answer is better than the previous ones. LEO < Clark's orbit means orbiting speed is too far from escape velocity. Atmospheric drag is free(almost),fuel will be consumed just for targeting.
There is so much info out there. Maybe check out some wiki pages about orbital mechanics or how iss maintains altitude and avoids debris. Perhaps try playing some kerbal spave program to be able to get a feeling for how these things work. Super interesting stuff
I didnt read the article so dont know the plan. But if logic serves they would either use a controlled burst to decay its orbit into a target area. Or they push it out of orbit, but inferred from someone else comment it is in such low earth orbit that it cost much less for it to decay on its own, but then they cant target the area. Im guessing they intent a last moment burst to further reduce costs but the window for error will likely be large. So not really last minute.
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u/pabloescobarsnephew 5d ago
Why does it HAVE to be de-orbited? There’s really no use or reason to keep it up there and maintaining it? At least parts of it?