Skip to content
Juneteenth 2025: Honoring Freedom, Advancing Justice, and Celebrating Black Futures with CSSH
Apply
Stories

NASA May Pay $1 Billion to Destroy the International Space Station. Here’s Why

People in this story

The International Space Station seen from the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft during a fly-around of the orbiting lab after undocking from the Harmony module space-facing port November 8, 2021 in Earth Orbit.

Scientific American, November 2023

For nearly a quarter century, the International Space Station (ISS) has continuously hosted astronauts and science experiments as an enduring and beloved bastion of humanity in low-Earth orbit. Yet despite its successes, the space station’s days are numbered.

In the coming months, NASA will be evaluating commercial proposals for vehicles capable of “decommissioning” the ISS—that is, of safely dropping it into Earth’s atmosphere to burn up. The agency has said it expects to pay nearly $1 billion for this service to avoid relying on multiple Russian vehicles. The brutal ending is scheduled for early next decade but is already proving a delicate matter for aerospace engineering and international diplomacy.

The ISS is “a key symbol of international and civilian cooperation,” says Mai’a Cross, a political scientist at Northeastern University. “In terms of civilian cooperation, I think many would describe it as the biggest project ever embarked upon in human history.”

Continue reading at Scientific American.

More Stories

Machismo: The origins of the word and what it means today

06.12.2025
US Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) (Image: Getty)

Ted Cruz renews bid to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terror group

06.11.2025
The US Supreme Court is seen in Washington, DC, on November 5, 2023. (Photo by Stefani Reynolds / AFP) (Photo by STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

Expanding ICE protests put Democratic governors’ immigration policies in focus

06.13.25
All Stories