Elon Musk's SpaceX takes on the task of destroying decommissioned space stations

NASA has selected Elon Musk's SpaceX to bring the end-of-life International Space Station back to Earth.

The California-based company plans to build a spacecraft capable of launching a 430-ton orbital platform into the Pacific Ocean early in the next decade.

The contract for the work, worth up to US$843 million ($668 million), was announced on Wednesday.

The first elements of the space station were launched in 1998, and continuous manned operations began in 2000.

The space station orbits Earth every 90 minutes at an altitude of just over 400 kilometers (250 miles) and has been the site of thousands of scientific experiments investigating everything from the human aging process to formulating new types of materials.

Engineers say the lab is structurally sound, but plans must be made now for its eventual disposal: Without assistance, the lab will eventually fall to Earth on its own, posing a major danger to people on the surface.

“Selecting a U.S. deorbiter for the International Space Station (ISS) helps NASA and its international partners ensure a safe and responsible transition to low Earth orbit at the end of the Station's operations. This decision also supports NASA's future commercial destinations plans and enables the continued utilization of near-Earth space,” Ken Bowersox, NASA's space operations administrator, said in a statement.

The United States and Russia lead the ISS project, with Europe, Canada and Japan in supporting roles. All Western nations have agreed to fund the ISS until 2030, and Russia has said it will remain committed until at least 2028.

NASA has been studying various options for disposal at the end of its life.

This includes dismantling the station and using new elements on next-generation platforms. Another idea is to outsource the operation and maintenance of the station to a private company.

However, all of these solutions have various problems, including complexity, cost, and legal difficulties that require resolving ownership issues.

Neither NASA nor SpaceX have released design details for the deorbit “tugboat,” but it would require a significant amount of thrust to guide the space station safely back into the atmosphere at the right place and at the right time.

The platform's mass and size are roughly the size of a football field, so some of its structures and components should be able to withstand the heat of re-entry and make it to the surface.

Mission controllers will allow the ISS's orbit to decay naturally over a period of time, then after dropping off the last crew members, they will direct the tugboats to perform the final deorbit maneuver.

The surplus spacecraft is being headed to a remote location in the Pacific Ocean known as Point Nemo.

Named after the crew of the famous submarine featured in Jules Verne's novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” the cemetery is more than 2,500 kilometers from the nearest land.

NASA expects that by the time the ISS is lifted out of the sky, several private consortiums will have begun launching commercial space stations.

The space agency's focus will now shift to a project to build a platform called the Gateway to orbit the moon.

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