The International Space Station is approaching retirement after two decades: what comes next

The International Space Station behaves like a zero-gravity laboratory circling the Earth high above its atmosphere, and has just celebrated its 20th anniversary. On November 2, 2000, the space station was deployed into outer space with the aim of allowing long-term exploration.

The International Space Station has six state-of-the-art laboratories, and is four times larger and more capable than any previous space station. The ISS had a lot of interesting work to do, as the orbiting laboratory hosted 241 astronauts from 19 countries.

The International Space Station will retire within the next 15 years

NASA will likely deorbit the famous station by crashing it into the South Pacific Ocean. But what could replace the ISS nobody knows. Blue Origin is one of the companies that could offer an alternative, as they want to build new space housing to resemble life on Earth.

Axiom Space and Bigelow Aerospace are other notable companies, as they plan to add extensions to the station that could be removed to orbit as their habitat.

The ISS project represents an agreement entered into between five participating space agencies. The most famous is of course NASA in the United States. The other participants are ESA from Europe, Roscosmos from Russia, JAXA from Japan and CSA from Canada. The first component of the ISS was launched way back in 1998, while the first residents arrived in November 2000. The station has been occupied for two decades, and this is the longest human presence in low earth orbit. The previous record was held by the Mir space station: 9 years and 357 days.

The Universe is always there waiting for us to discover its mysteries, even if a human life will never be enough if you want to discover all the secrets of our physical reality.

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