'And that's actually corroding the outside.'ĭocking and undocking of vehicles ferrying supplies and people to and fro can put strain on the space station's structure, and various cracks and leaks have been patched up over the years. 'Oxygen atoms are very strongly oxidising, and the space station is flying around 7.8km per second through this very tenuous atmosphere of oxygen atoms,' Dr Steel said. They comprise about 96 per cent of the atmosphere in low-Earth orbit. Bacteria, fungi and other microbes survive and thrive there too.īut what is plentiful at 400km up is oxygen atoms. This is partly because, quite simply, it's gunking up and wearing out. 'But,' Dr Steel says, 'it was never the idea that the space station would be permanent.' Tonnes of parts have been added, removed and replaced over the years since. The first segment of the space station, the Zarya Control Module, launched aboard a Russian Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan in 1998. The US and Russia announced plans to build it together in 1993, and Japanese, Canadian and European space agencies signed on later. The space station's international focus has been a 'wonderful thing in many ways', says Duncan Steel, a space scientist at Xerra Earth Observation Institute in New Zealand. Given the space station's decades of international cooperation - not to mention the cash needed to get it up and running (it's the most expensive object ever built) - why will it be dragged down and destroyed?Īnd once it's gone, what will take its place? Why is the ISS being retired? On New Year's Eve, NASA extended the space station's operations from 2024 to 2030. That day will mark the end of 32 years of space station construction, experiments, photography and - since November 2000 - continuous human habitation, all while hurtling around the planet once every 90 minutes or so. The iconic piece of space infrastructure will be nudged out of its orbit and eventually meet its watery demise when it plunges into the ocean and smashes into smithereens.

The clock is ticking for the International Space Station, with NASA last week declaring plans to let it plummet back to Earth in 2031.

Inside the international space station