It Will Cost $1 Billion to Deorbit the International Space Station

By Vulian

For more than a quarter of a century, the International Space Station (ISS) has been a symbol of international cooperation, engineering prowess, and human endurance in orbit. Weighing more than 450 metric tons, the ISS has circled the Earth over 120,000 times since 2000, hosting astronauts from 20 nations. But this icon of diplomacy and science is nearing its end.

According to NASA’s current plan, the ISS will be decommissioned around 2031. The agency estimates it will cost up to $1 billion to safely guide the 109-meter-wide structure out of orbit and let it burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, with any surviving debris falling into a remote area of the South Pacific known as the Spacecraft Cemetery.

The station’s orbit gradually decays as it encounters thin layers of atmospheric drag, lowering its altitude by roughly 100 meters per day. To counter this, resupply spacecraft periodically boost its orbit. But when the time comes to retire the ISS, NASA won’t simply let it fall uncontrollably. Instead, it will execute a precise multi-step process to ensure the station reenters safely.

Initially, the ISS will descend naturally, losing altitude over several weeks or months until it reaches about 400 kilometers above Earth. At that point, a specialized spacecraft—known as the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle (USDV)—will dock with the station and begin controlled descent maneuvers. Engines will fire several times to adjust its orbit from circular to elliptical, shortening the time spent in denser layers of the atmosphere. The final burn will send the ISS on a trajectory toward its designated reentry zone in the South Pacific.

Originally, NASA planned to use Russian Progress cargo ships for this final deorbit phase. But following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the gradual unraveling of U.S.–Russia space cooperation, that option is no longer viable. In 2024, NASA awarded a contract to SpaceX to design and build the new Deorbit Vehicle, supported by engineering input from Axiom Space and Northrop Grumman.

The estimated cost of the deorbit mission ranges from $900 million to $1 billion, including construction, testing, launch, and mission operations.

Many space policy experts argue that retiring the ISS is not merely a technical challenge—it’s a symbolic transition. For over two decades, the station represented an unprecedented collaboration between former rivals: the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. As one NASA official put it, “Bringing the ISS down safely is as much about honoring that partnership as it is about physics.”

NASA plans to replace the ISS with a new era of commercial space stations, developed by private companies like Axiom Space, Blue Origin, and Voyager. These stations will host both government astronauts and commercial users, forming part of NASA’s long-term strategy to hand over low-Earth orbit operations to the private sector while focusing its own efforts on lunar and Martian exploration.

Yet as the countdown to the ISS’s final years begins, scientists and space historians emphasize the magnitude of what’s being lost. The ISS has enabled more than 3,000 scientific experiments, helped test technologies for deep space missions, and inspired a generation of scientists. “When it burns up, a piece of human cooperation burns with it,” one researcher said.

Even as we look forward to the next era of space exploration, the International Space Station remains an enduring reminder of what nations can achieve together above the divisions of Earth.

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