What do we do with the International Space Station when the facility is retired? That seems to be the question hovering over us right now.
NASA’s report on the rationale for ISS decommission suggests that the agency’s imagination (and budget) seem to be running dry. It appears, through new projects like the lunar Gateway and Artemis, that the agency is being hobbled by more human spaceflight programs than it can afford to spend resources on. The easy way out is to eliminate the ISS and wipe the sheet clean so NASA can move on to new programs. The agency claims that there have been no credible offers or requests to transfer operations to another entity.
I hope the collective forward-looking vision of our people does not succumb to this vacuum of creativity.
Besides the new knowledge that these facilities have gathered, the ISS and observatories like Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope have deep meaning associated with them. Their true value far exceeds the science and technology of our time.
As so many thought leaders have argued, we should find ways to protect and preserve our collective heritage as a species — not ways to destroy it and worse, to erase any trace of precious unique artifacts that continue to shape and evolve the view of who we are and our purpose and place in the cosmos.
Beyond sheer scientific value or advancement of technology, the ISS holds tremendous symbolic significance. Symbolism that lays over the foundation of philosophy upon which ideologies are built and policies of nations are formulated.
The ISS was built and is being maintained through global participation and cooperation among nations with diverse cultural and governance philosophies. Free world values and peaceful collaboration are at the heart of the ISS program. The exchange of ideas, technologies and hardware to conceive, create and operate the ISS has weaved bonds in international relations and brought nations, even adversarial ones, together in common peaceful pursuit. Human spaceflight is at the core of this pursuit.
Just take a look at the diverse astronaut crew onboard the ISS or the global support team associated with such an endeavor. Forget the budget. The sheer elbow grease from the thousands of scientists, engineers and highly skilled technicians and policy makers that went into bringing the world of nations together to create, operate and maintain the ISS program far exceeds all the budget woes and associated drama.
Unlike the Salyut missions, Skylab or Mir which were symbols of national prestige, or the Chinese Tiangong station in orbit now, scuttling the ISS would set back the shared cosmopolitan ambitions of our species rather than continue to enhance and enrich the spirit of global collaboration and cooperation.
We should create new orbital stations and extraterrestrial habitats. We should also use our collective imagination to at least continue to service this unique facility until the next generation of stations become real. Otherwise, we’ll be faced with a difficult situation similar to the space transportation gap we faced after the agency retired the Space Shuttle.
If the ISS is truly showing age and has become unsafe for crewmembers, we should find ways to preserve it in a parking orbit as an uncrewed artifact, making it the centerpiece for an International Space Artifacts Museum that would include other historic assets like the aging Hubble space Telescope
In our book, “The Moon, Resources, Future Development & Settlement,” my coauthors and I proposed a concept for such a museum.
Though we suggested the Earth-Moon Lagrange point L1 as the final spot in cislunar space for the Space Museum, we could begin to collect and preserve artifacts in a suitable Earth parking orbit until we mature more the transportation and propulsion systems necessary to relocate it farther out.
Yes, there are tough engineering problems to address, and for now the museum exists as a conceptual vision with many of the technical and practical details left to be sorted out later. But technologies that exist today may be able to solve some of the challenges inherent to the idea. For instance, there are multiple options that may be able to bring the ISS and future decommissioned outposts to the desired location. For one, advanced electric propulsion coupled with power from existing large solar arrays could gently thrust the ISS into a higher orbit where LEO constellation traffic is much more manageable and the threat of orbital debris is reduced. Also, spacecraft could carry electrodynamic tethers that interact with the Earth’s magnetic field to alter orbits, as has been proposed in the past. Gentle initial thrusting of the fragile ISS truss structure is also possible using small conventional thrusters that employ deep throttling, several of which are being built and tested using state-of-the-art additive manufacturing methods.
Furthermore, the increased orbital debris threat could be mitigated by mounting high energy laser systems such as those that are already mature and in use today by the military and heavy industry. The ISS has ample power onboard to neutralize any threat posed by debris by adopting this line-of-sight speed-of-light (LOSSOL) targeting approach. Testing such a LOSSOL mitigation technology on the ISS would prove valuable even beyond preserving the space station, as it would serve as an additional test bed for LOSSOL, which will be vital for fast-trajectory crewed interplanetary missions using nuclear propulsion. It is time to develop and certify such debris threat mitigation systems, and the ISS could play host to this critical technology development.
The harder issues may lie in the modification of existing memoranda of understanding among the partners. Partner nations with deep historical roots also know the immense value of history and preservation. Our nation should lead the effort as we have done all along, and continue to provide the maximum resources to keep the facility in orbit. We should also encourage more partners to join the coalition to preserve ISS just as we are doing with the Artemis Accords right now.
It is good to be reminded that we dearly hold on to and cherish the continuum of civilization by preserving historic artifacts all over the globe. When we do so, culture is enriched, and generations to come will value the preservation of heritage of historic artifacts of our era.
That is why we have cultural heritage sites and museums around the globe: to protect and preserve the continuity of thought and creativity of our species and our civilization, lest we forget how we became what we are today and what our aspirations are for tomorrow.
We already do this on Earth: in civil architecture philosophy, we also rehabilitate and service historically relevant buildings and infrastructure all over the world. In fact, some structures in use today date back to the cradle of civilization.
The time is right to start developing the infrastructure for an International Space Artifacts Museum so that we may preserve our species’s heritage in space and on celestial bodies as we explore and settle lands beyond planet Earth. Through such an effort, we can also develop new technologies for the maintenance and evolution of endurance-class spacecraft that can take us farther than ever before.
The ISS collaboration has paid rich dividends in the past and continues to do so today. Our bipartisan leadership should work proactively with partner nations and emerging spacefaring nations to propose a creative plan to establish such a museum when the time comes to decommission this unique facility.
Our leaders know this, and our architects stand ready to act too!
Madhu Thangavelu conducts the graduate Space Exploration Architecture Concept Synthesis Studio in the Department of Astronautical Engineering within the Viterbi School of Engineering and the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California. He is on the faculty of the International Space University, an international organization that trains space professionals. He is a director of the National Space Society and the North American activities coordinator for the Moon Village Association.
