Elon Musk's SpaceX contracted to destroy retired space station - BBC News
Elon Musk's SpaceX contracted to destroy retired space station - BBC News
The California-based company will build a "tugboat" to execute the end-of-life disposal of the ISS.
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IIRC Russia was talking about detaching their modules and using them to help bootstrap some new station. So I dunno if those will get brought down.
That being said, that was also when that rather pugnacious guy was running Roscosmos, and I dunno if doing a new space station is the top of Russia's priority list for their limited budget.
kagis
kagis further
It looks like they canceled the idea of reusing the Russian ISS modules back in 2021. So I guess those are destined for SpaceX's deorbit too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_Piloted_Assembly_and_Experiment_Complex
The Orbital Piloted Assembly and Experiment Complex (Russian: Орбитальный Пилотируемый Сборочно-Экспериментальный Комплекс, Orbital'nyj Pilotirujemyj Sborochno-Eksperimental'nyj Kompleks;[1][2] ОПСЭК, OPSEK) was a 2009–2017 proposed third-generation Russian modular space station for low Earth orbit. The concept was to use OPSEK to assemble components of crewed interplanetary spacecraft destined for the Moon, Mars, and possibly Saturn. The returning crew could also recover on the station before landing on Earth. Thus, OPSEK could form part of a future network of stations supporting crewed exploration of the Solar System.
In early plans, the station was to consist initially of several modules from the Russian Orbital Segment (ROS) of the International Space Station (ISS). However, after studying the feasibility of this, the head of Roscosmos stated in September 2017 the intention to continue working together on the ISS.[3] In April 2021, Roscosmos officials announced plans to exit from the ISS programme after 2024, stating concerns about the condition of its aging modules. The OPSEK concept had by then evolved into plans for the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS), which would be built without modules from the ISS, and was anticipated to be launched starting in the mid-2020s.[4][5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Orbital_Service_Station
The Russian Orbital Service Station (Russian: Российская орбитальная служебная станция, Rossiyskaya orbital'naya sluzhebnaya stantsiya) (ROSS, Russian: РОСС)[3] is a proposed Russian orbital space station scheduled to begin construction in 2027. Initially an evolution of the Orbital Piloted Assembly and Experiment Complex (OPSEK) concept, ROSS developed into plans for a new standalone Russian space station built from scratch without modules from the Russian Orbital Segment of the ISS.[4]
I still dunno if they're gonna get the money for a new space station. Like, deciding to have a war in Ukraine may have kind of killed off the viability of doing a new space station.
There's no way Russia builds a new station. The timeline for them getting Nauka to orbit basically proves that it's impossible. They've been trying to buddy up with China to visit theirs, though.