2024-11-04
22 分钟The International Space Station will be decommissioned in 2030 and crash down into the Pacific Ocean, ending more than three decades of international cooperation. Launched in the wake of the Cold War, the ISS is seen as a triumph of global diplomacy between the US, Russia and other nations. Its demise will mark the end of an era. Nasa has awarded contracts to commercial companies to develop potential successors to the ISS, and maintain a U.S. presence in low earth orbit. Meanwhile Russia and India have said they plan to launch their own individual stations, and China has already got its own space station, Tiangong. As the era of the International Space Station nears its end, this week on The Inquiry, we’re asking ‘What will happen after the International Space Station?’ Presenter: Tanya Beckett Producer: Matt Toulson Researcher: Kirsteen Knight Editor: Tara McDermott Technical Operator: Ben Houghton Contributors: Jennifer Levasseur, Museum Curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C., US Mark McCaughrean, former Senior Advisor for Science & Exploration at the European Space Agency and astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany Mai'a Cross, Professor of political science at Northeastern University, and director for the Center for International Affairs and World Cultures, Massachusetts, US Wendy Whitman Cobb, Professor of strategy and security studies at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Alabama, US CREDIT: State of the Union address, 1984; Courtesy Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
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Welcome to the Inquiry with me, Tanya Beckett from the BBC World Service.
One question, four expert witnesses, and an answer.
In a few short years, one of the greatest feats of scientific cooperation the world has ever seen will come to the end of its life.
The International Space Station will fall dramatically from the sky, dropping 400 kilometers through the clouds.
It will burn up and break into fragments as it hits the Earth's atmosphere and finally crash into the depths of the Pacific Ocean.
Launched in the wake of the Cold War in 1998 as a triumph of global diplomacy and collaboration, the demise of the International Space Station will mark the end of an era.
Its achievements range from scientific breakthroughs on medicine and disease to monitoring climate change.
Orbiting the Earth every hour and a half for nearly three decades, the ISS has been a reliable constant in our lives.
In the time it takes you to listen to this 23 minute program, the ISS will travel as far as the distance between London and Buenos aires.
But nearly 30 years after it went into orbit, its structures are weakening.
And now it has just six years left on the clock.
This week on the Inquiry, we're asking what will happen after the International Space Station?
Part one Liftoff.
The International Space Station is always moving around the Earth.
It orbits very rapidly.
It takes about 93 minutes or so for it to make a single orbit.