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thewayneIn 2022, the bill that funded NASA extended funding for the International Space Station to 2030, and that was it. NASA started researching ways to end the life of the ISS at that point, and decided that a controlled deorbit was the best bet: lower it to a planned orbit where the increased friction with Earth's atmosphere will eventually cause re-entry and for it to crash into the Pacific Ocean's "space graveyard". That way it's controlled and theoretically won't hit land, potentially causing some really significant damage. The station would be shut-down in 2030 and the deorbit burn would happen in 2031, I'm a little unclear when it would actually re-enter the atmosphere.
Well, that plan might end up being scratched because of an effort being led by California Democratic Representative George Whiteside.
He's on the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology (vice-ranking member) and on the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics (according to Wikipedia). His career has involved a lot of the space industry, and he's worked at NASA, but the roles seem to be in management and as a director. His Masters degree is in GIS and remote sensing, not in engineering.
He attached a rider to the new NASA funding bill, currently in committee, for them to study boosting the ISS to a parking orbit rather than deorbiting the thing. He thinks it can have a longer life.
A parking orbit is high enough where there's no atmospheric friction and an object placed there can easily stay put for a century.
That's sort of a yes and no proposition. Can the ISS have a longer life? Well, yes. It's reasonably sound structurally, it undergoes a day/night heat/cool cycle every 45 minutes and has been doing that for quite a few years now. But it is old tech.
There are some major problems with boosting it up to a parking orbit. SpaceX was given a huge contract to build a modified Dragon capsule with more engines and fuel to change the orbit of the station to start its demise. It would take twice the fuel, at a minimum to increase the orbit, depending on where they want to park it. WE DON'T HAVE A SPACECRAFT CAPABLE OF DOING THIS. We no longer have space shuttles, there's only two craft capable of going to the ISS: the SpaceX Dragon and the Russian capsule. Maybe there are two Russian crafts: one is crewed and the other is cargo, I'm not sure if they're just variants of each other. They use those to boost the orbit of the ISS, but it's still in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). And the Russians are having a lot of problems with their lift capability right now.
Now on top of this, NASA was been told it's supposed to deorbit the ISS. This was an order from Congress. It's been told to focus on working with private commercial space stations, and part of that plan was predicated on the ISS going away. But as we know, they are at the whim of Congress and the Administration, which is a reed in the wind.
But now Whiteside wants a space museum, in space. For possible reuse.
So what Whiteside wants is for a spaceship that doesn't exist to boost the orbit of the ISS, which NASA has been previously told to get rid of. And the orbit that it's to be put into has more space junk, which means the ISS is more likely to be hit by space junk, causing damage and creating even more space junk. Currently it makes orbital maneuvers to avoid space junk even in low earth orbit! What's it going to do in a parking orbit with no crew?
So we don't have the tech to get it up to that orbit. Such a boost is in danger of causing severe stress to the ISS structure - that hasn't been studied yet since such a booster is entirely theoretical. The ISS would be unmanned, since a booster to move it up would probably be unmanned and used via remote control, so no one to do space walks and do repairs to the ISS. I'm sure SpaceX would love the opportunity and contracts to build something that could make manned round trips to that orbit, is Congress going to give NASA and SpaceX the money? Yeah, right. But even then, you're now extending the functional mission of the ISS by having a crewed space mission, which contravenes its supposed mission to work with private commercial space stations.
I don't know what this guy was thinking.
On a side note, some of you may remember a Russian module had a steady air leak for some time. A small one, it was manageable. They had a lot of problems finding it, but they finally found the source and it has been sealed and the ISS is completely atmospherically tight now.
Whiteside needs to either let it go and be deorbited, or find the money to extend the funding for the ISS beyond 2030. Let SpaceX develop the deorbiter, it may come in handy some day. And maybe in another 10-20 years, we'll have a better Earth-to-Orbit lift capability and moving it up to a higher orbit will be more viable. Congress is not going to increase the budget of NASA to fund a research program to develop a heavy booster to move the ISS to a parking orbit, though they might try to gut even more NASA programs to try to fund such a thing. It's been done before.
But for now, I think boosting the ISS up to a parking orbit is not a very smart idea.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/congress-advances-bill-requiring-nasa-to-reconsider-deorbiting-space-station/
Well, that plan might end up being scratched because of an effort being led by California Democratic Representative George Whiteside.
He's on the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology (vice-ranking member) and on the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics (according to Wikipedia). His career has involved a lot of the space industry, and he's worked at NASA, but the roles seem to be in management and as a director. His Masters degree is in GIS and remote sensing, not in engineering.
He attached a rider to the new NASA funding bill, currently in committee, for them to study boosting the ISS to a parking orbit rather than deorbiting the thing. He thinks it can have a longer life.
A parking orbit is high enough where there's no atmospheric friction and an object placed there can easily stay put for a century.
That's sort of a yes and no proposition. Can the ISS have a longer life? Well, yes. It's reasonably sound structurally, it undergoes a day/night heat/cool cycle every 45 minutes and has been doing that for quite a few years now. But it is old tech.
There are some major problems with boosting it up to a parking orbit. SpaceX was given a huge contract to build a modified Dragon capsule with more engines and fuel to change the orbit of the station to start its demise. It would take twice the fuel, at a minimum to increase the orbit, depending on where they want to park it. WE DON'T HAVE A SPACECRAFT CAPABLE OF DOING THIS. We no longer have space shuttles, there's only two craft capable of going to the ISS: the SpaceX Dragon and the Russian capsule. Maybe there are two Russian crafts: one is crewed and the other is cargo, I'm not sure if they're just variants of each other. They use those to boost the orbit of the ISS, but it's still in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). And the Russians are having a lot of problems with their lift capability right now.
Now on top of this, NASA was been told it's supposed to deorbit the ISS. This was an order from Congress. It's been told to focus on working with private commercial space stations, and part of that plan was predicated on the ISS going away. But as we know, they are at the whim of Congress and the Administration, which is a reed in the wind.
But now Whiteside wants a space museum, in space. For possible reuse.
So what Whiteside wants is for a spaceship that doesn't exist to boost the orbit of the ISS, which NASA has been previously told to get rid of. And the orbit that it's to be put into has more space junk, which means the ISS is more likely to be hit by space junk, causing damage and creating even more space junk. Currently it makes orbital maneuvers to avoid space junk even in low earth orbit! What's it going to do in a parking orbit with no crew?
So we don't have the tech to get it up to that orbit. Such a boost is in danger of causing severe stress to the ISS structure - that hasn't been studied yet since such a booster is entirely theoretical. The ISS would be unmanned, since a booster to move it up would probably be unmanned and used via remote control, so no one to do space walks and do repairs to the ISS. I'm sure SpaceX would love the opportunity and contracts to build something that could make manned round trips to that orbit, is Congress going to give NASA and SpaceX the money? Yeah, right. But even then, you're now extending the functional mission of the ISS by having a crewed space mission, which contravenes its supposed mission to work with private commercial space stations.
I don't know what this guy was thinking.
On a side note, some of you may remember a Russian module had a steady air leak for some time. A small one, it was manageable. They had a lot of problems finding it, but they finally found the source and it has been sealed and the ISS is completely atmospherically tight now.
Whiteside needs to either let it go and be deorbited, or find the money to extend the funding for the ISS beyond 2030. Let SpaceX develop the deorbiter, it may come in handy some day. And maybe in another 10-20 years, we'll have a better Earth-to-Orbit lift capability and moving it up to a higher orbit will be more viable. Congress is not going to increase the budget of NASA to fund a research program to develop a heavy booster to move the ISS to a parking orbit, though they might try to gut even more NASA programs to try to fund such a thing. It's been done before.
But for now, I think boosting the ISS up to a parking orbit is not a very smart idea.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/congress-advances-bill-requiring-nasa-to-reconsider-deorbiting-space-station/
