Published on July 1, 2024 at 5:00 p.m.
From 120°C to minus 150°C in a few hours, the International Space Station is put to the test every day. And this ends up leaving its mark on its structure.
A difference of 270°C
The International Space Station received its first residents on Halloween 2000. Astronaut Bill Sheppard and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev were the first occupants. The first pieces were assembled in 1998, so it has been exposed to these temperature fluctuations for 26 years. The Station was designed to operate for 30 years. Fortunately, tests have shown that the structure is more resistant than expected to the stresses associated with extreme hot and cold temperatures.
At the end of life
The Station will still be obsolete in 2030. What will NASA do with this structure of more than 400 tons which cost nearly 200 billion to build and 100 billion to operate? Pushing it so that it crashes into the Pacific Ocean. The SpaceX firm was chosen to develop the trailer vessel which will deviate the Station from its orbit so that it enters the atmosphere at 28,000 km/h. The vehicle will cost $843 million. This time, SpaceX will have an easier target to reach than for their reusable rockets: the 165 million square km of the Pacific Ocean.
