What will be done with the ISS, which is nearing the end of its service life?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The service life of one of the most ambitious and expensive projects of mankind - the International Space Station - will end in 2024, but the partners are deciding what to do with it now.

For twenty years, the ISS has remained the only place that allows a person to stay in space for a long time. The station is located 400 km from the Earth, and we did not get beyond this boundary for a long time. But its service life expires in 2024, the ISS is out of date, and humanity needs to move forward - to the Moon and Mars.

"Financial weight" - as in recent years, the ISS is increasingly called, where about 30-40% of the space budgets of the countries participating in the project go. The problem is that there is no working alternative to the orbital station yet, and the problems are growing.

Option 1: Just drown

In 2020, the situation with the technical condition of the ISS has deteriorated significantly. In August, a crack appeared in its hull, resulting in a drop in pressure at the station. At first, they looked for the leak in the American segment, but at the end of September, Roscosmos reported that the crack was in the Russian Zvezda module.

This is a key module of the entire station, through its docking stations, the ISS is refueled, replenished with drinking water, and it is also responsible for correcting the orbit (the ISS is a colossus the size of a football field, and it needs constant help to stay in orbit).

Then the alleged place of the air leak was closed up with "improvised means" - American plasticine. However, this did not completely solve the problem. In mid-October 2020, the cosmonauts found another possible gap in the Zvezda's transition compartment - with the help of a tea bag, the movement of which was recorded by cameras in zero gravity.

Whether there are still gaps in the hull is not yet clear, but on December 19 the ISS was warned that they were running out of reserve air to replace the leak. This is already a threat to the safety of the crew itself.

All this is still consistent with the recent forecast of the Russian RSC Energia (a leading design corporation): “Already now there are a number of elements that are seriously affected by damage and are going out of service. Many of them are not replaceable. After 2025, we predict an avalanche-like failure of numerous elements,”said Deputy General Director Vladimir Solovyov.

In particular, the Zvezda module itself cannot be replaced - its production has not survived since Soviet times. This means that it would have to be mastered anew, based on other technologies, and a lot of time spent on testing to make sure it was ready.

All this suggests one thought: to do with the ISS the way it is customary to do with massive space objects that have worked out their life - to drown in the Pacific Ocean, far from the navigable routes. The object partially burns up in the atmosphere, and the fragments fall into the water. So in 2001, for example, the predecessor of the ISS, the Russian Mir station, was de-orbited.

In the United States, the issue of injecting money to maintain the outdated station is especially acute, because they bear about 70% of all costs (Russia - 12%). The extension of the plant's life each year freezes billions of dollars that could go towards the creation of a new plant and the development of finished projects. NASA has already announced that it will stop funding the ISS from 2025 in order to "free up" this amount. Russia, on the other hand, is unequivocally in favor of extending the operation until 2028 or 2030. And although no one has yet decided on its fate, it looks like the participating countries are interested in the ISS continuing to fly (but, probably, on different conditions).

“The main reason for this interest is the absence of any replacement for the ISS for all program participants,” notes Vitaly Yegorov, an independent expert and popularizer of cosmonautics.

Option 2: Give the ISS to private hands

In June 2019, NASA presented the LEO program - in fact, the transfer of the ISS to commercial rails. After all, if the agency stops paying billions, it must be done by someone else. The program encourages private astronaut flights to the ISS at the expense of non-state companies, as well as the construction of private space stations.

Roskosmos has never seriously considered a similar option. First, there is no private manned cosmonautics in Russia, this is a purely state prerogative. Secondly, as noted by industrial expert Leonid Khazanov, over the years, the ISS has been most of all used for exploration of extraterrestrial space and science, and this is its main meaning - experiments and scientific programs on board are conducted every day. "Experiments are only possible with government funding," he says.

It turns out that the purchase of only American modules is being considered, and no one will buy the Russian ones. And even if such a buyer were found, there is one significant problem: the Russian docking compartment of the ISS Zarya, which was made in Russia, was actually paid for in the 90s by NASA as part of an unspoken American program to support Russian astronautics and therefore also belongs to NASA. “Russia will have to build a new docking bay to gain access to its own modules. And without the docking compartment of the ISS, private traders don't need it,”Egorov said.

Option 3: Hub station

Another option for using the ISS is to transform it into a hub for delivering cargo to the Moon. The appearance of an orbiting lunar station is only a matter of time. Its various options (including joint development) are being considered by many countries, and the ISS can serve as a "transshipment point". It will be cheaper than if the rockets flew directly to the Moon.

There are many more players who want to operate the ISS in this way: lunar programs (or, at least, ambitions) are owned by both space agencies and private owners like SpaceX, Boeing and the Russian S7. Roscosmos, in particular, planned, among other things, to send parts of the Russian segment of the ISS to the Moon by 2030 in order to build a lunar orbital base from them. True, this plan has many skeptics and not the most realistic deadlines. Probably, Russia's interest in the ISS in its current form is still higher.

Option 4: Russia will "unhook" its modules

Separating the Russian segment and continuing to use the multi-module piece of the ISS alone is another scenario, it was discussed much more often. The end of the ISS joint operation agreement after 2024 will allow the participants to secede. But such an outcome for Russia, although tempting, is much more complicated than all the previous ones. There are both technical and financial problems.

For example, the Zvezda key module, which requires orientation and orbit correction, does not have its own gyrodines (these are special engines for just this purpose). Russian cargo "Progress" are docked to the aft node of the module, which sometimes turn on the engines to raise its orbit. But they use up fuel quickly. Egorov notes that the combination of American gyrodines and Russian attitude control engines is one of the key elements of the "marriage contract", which makes it impossible to "split" the ISS into two separate stations.

Moreover, as before, no one canceled the station wear and possible new cracks. At the same time, astronautics, already heavily subsidized by the budget of the Russian Federation, is losing more and more money.

Sale of seats in "Soyuz" after the successful launch of Crew Dragon from Elon Musk risks being reduced to a minimum; Commercial cargo launches have also been gradually shifting to competitors since 2012, when SpaceX brought its heavy Falcon 9 rocket to market. And the Russian Ministry of Finance believes that funding for Roscosmos should be cut in the next three years - by another 60 billion rubles.

Option 5: Make a new national station

So far, the idea of creating our own national station to replace the ISS - the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS) - sounds the loudest. Dmitry Rogozin, the general director of Roscosmos, personally advocates for it: “The ISS will probably last until 2030. Now we are starting to create a new orbital station, we already have two modules in reserve. We plan to add a few more modules to it: in fact, after 2030, the Russian Federation will be the country that will create a new station”.

According to him, the new station, unlike the ISS, will be able to refuel ships and satellites, increasing their service life. It is also planned to house a workshop for the assembly of spacecraft that will fly to the Moon, Mars and asteroids, and the headquarters for the management of the entire orbital group.

One of the modules will be commercial, for four tourists - two large windows will be installed there and there will be access to WiFi. As they say, all the modules for ROSS can be launched into orbit using the Angara-A5 launch vehicles - Russia launched the second rocket in six years in December 2020, it took a quarter of a century to develop.

Perhaps the key advantage of ROSS is its unlimited lifetime due to replaceable modules. But Russian experts say that although ROSS is good as an idea, it can remain so. “Russian plans change very often, so I would not say that after the ISS Russia will build its own station,” says engineer Alexander Shaenko, who developed the Angara-A5 and KSLV launch vehicles.

You don't have to go far for examples of long-term construction: one of the modules called Nauka, which was supposed to become a scientific module of the ISS in the Russian segment, was planned to be launched into orbit 11 years ago, but this never happened.