New Delhi: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Friday again recommended deorbiting the International Space Station within the next two years, much ahead of the planned deorbit in 2031.
NASA plans to deorbit the ISS in 2031, with the deorbit vehicle expected to be ready by 2028.
The ISS, a joint project involving NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Roscosmos, has been operational since 1998.
It has continuously hosted astronaut crews since November 2000, supporting research for future deep-space missions.
Musk raised serious concerns about the safety of the ISS and the astronauts on board.
“There are potentially serious concerns about the long-term safety of the Space Station. Some parts of it are simply getting too old and obviously that risk grows over time,” Musk shared in a post on the social media platform X.
“Even though SpaceX earns billions of dollars from transporting astronauts and cargo to the ISS, I nonetheless would like to go on record recommending that it be de-orbited within 2 years,” he added.
Musk stated this in reply to Physicist Casey Handmer, a former NASA JPL software system architect, who highlighted “multiple, and increasingly frequent, leaks” on the ISS.
“The ISS’s structural integrity is far more marginal than is being publicly discussed. Multiple cracks have been discovered. There is no “factor of safety” associated with this failure mode. None of the structural pressure vessels are meant to crack. We are not even single fault tolerant on the structural integrity of the station. We could wake up tomorrow and find, with zero warning, that it has failed catastrophically,” Handmer said.
“Whether that means a leak slow enough to close some hatches, get the crew out or at least into safer parts of the station, is a roll of the dice. It could also depressurise in less than a minute,” he added.
Meanwhile, NASA in June 2024 awarded an $843 million contract to SpaceX to develop the US Deorbit Vehicle (USDV).
The vehicle, based on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, will dock with the ISS and guide it to a controlled deorbit over the South Pacific to minimise risks.
Musk has long been promoting Mars as the next goal for human spaceflight.
In a post in February on X, Musk said that the ISS “has served its purpose. There is very little incremental utility”. He added, “Let’s go to Mars.”
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