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Who is going to destroy the International Space Station?

Answer: SpaceX.

The International Space Station in orbit with the Earth in the background.
All good things must come to an end, so they say, and that includes the International Space Station (ISS). After hosting astronauts from all over the world for two decades, the ISS is reaching the end of its life and NASA has begun preparations to eventually put it out of commission.

But it won’t just be abandoned to float the cosmos for eternity. NASA has selected one of the U.S.’s prominent space-bound companies to destroy it. SpaceX has been selected to take on the $843 million contract to bring the ISS out of orbit and back into the atmosphere, which will effectively destroy it. This will require SpaceX to develop a deorbit vehicle to carry out the task, which will also burn up upon re-entry.

The demolition is expected to take place in 2030. It will be a sad day for the space industry, which has been revolutionized by the ISS. The first spacecraft of its kind, it has hosted astronauts from 23 different countries in its lifetime so far. It has been the site of nearly 3,000 research experiments, and astronauts aboard have taken more than 3.5 million photos of Earth.