Two years after stating there were no plans to save artifacts from the destructive end of the International Space Station (ISS), NASA is now in the early stages of identifying what small parts of the orbiting laboratory to preserve.
Agency officials on Wednesday (July 17) shared the preliminary details during a media briefing about the space station's end of life in 2030 and the selection of SpaceX to build the vehicle that will move the massive complex out of orbit such that it mostly burns up in Earth's atmosphere and plunge any surviving fragments into a remote area of the ocean.
"Twenty-five years out of the 60 years [of human spaceflight] has been on ISS," said Ken Bowersox, NASA's associate administrator for space operations and a former astronaut who spent 161 days aboard the station as the commander of its sixth crewed expedition.
