In a move that sounds like the setup to a punchline involving tax dollars and zero-gravity dreams, NASA has awarded SpaceX a cool $843 million to build a vehicle for the delicate task of nudging the aging International Space Station onto a kamikaze descent into Earth’s atmosphere. The mission is estimated to top out around $1 billion, which, in the world of orbital real estate demolition, is apparently a bargain.
The announcement came this week with the calm efficiency of a bureaucracy that has crash-landings scheduled years in advance. The spacecraft, dubbed the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle, will ensure that when the space station finally retires sometime after 2030, it goes out with a fiery curtain call over the most oceanic part of the Pacific. This is known as the South Pacific Oceanic Uninhabited Area, or, more affectionately among engineers, the Spacecraft Graveyard, where satellites go to die and no one can hear your reentry.
NASA said SpaceX was chosen for its “technical approach and ability to execute within schedule,” which is agency-speak for “they know where the buttons are and can probably build the thing before the ISS rusts in orbit.” SpaceX, already operating like Mission Control’s favorite kid who skipped a grade, will both design and manufacture the deorbit vehicle. Once it does its job, presumably with a few dramatic angles caught on camera, it too will enjoy its moment of combustion before ever seeing a museum.
The International Space Station, a glorious patchwork quilt of science experiments, international cooperation and space plumbing mishaps, has been continuously inhabited since 2000. It’s nearing the end of its useful life, and like many government projects, it is being retired not with a quiet shut-off switch but with a multimillion-dollar fireball you can’t look at directly.
“Selecting a US Deorbit Vehicle for the International Space Station will help NASA and its international partners ensure a safe and responsible transition in low Earth orbit at the end of station operations,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for Space Operations.
It says something about human ingenuity that the same species whose printers still jam every third page has figured out how to crash a several-hundred-ton orbital laboratory into one of the only places on Earth where no one is likely to notice.
After all, nothing says responsible space stewardship like sending an $843 million spaceship to take out a $150 billion one.