Uncontrolled Reentry: ISS Cargo Pallet Faces Imminent Destruction in Earth’s Atmosphere
In a dramatic conclusion to its journey, a 2.9-ton cargo pallet that played a crucial role in a battery upgrade mission on the International Space Station (ISS) is now hurtling towards Earth and is expected to reenter the atmosphere in the coming days. The pallet, which was released from the ISS by the Canadarm2 robotic arm in March 2021, is now facing imminent destruction as it makes its descent.
According to Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer Jonathan McDowell, while the pallet will not completely burn up on reentry, approximately half a ton of fragments are expected to hit the Earth’s surface. The exact location of reentry is currently unknown. The pallet, which served as the largest object ever jettisoned from the ISS, was released at an altitude of approximately 265 miles above the Earth’s surface.
The journey of this cargo pallet began with a mission to upgrade the ISS’s power system. In May 2020, a Japanese cargo ship delivered the SUV-sized equipment pallet to the ISS, enabling astronauts to replace the old nickel-hydrogen batteries with new and more efficient lithium-ion batteries. This battery replacement project spanned six years and involved four supply missions from the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) cargo spacecraft, 13 different astronauts, and 14 spacewalks. A total of 48 nickel-hydrogen batteries were replaced with 24 lithium-ion batteries, which store energy collected by the station’s solar arrays.
The uncontrolled disposal of the cargo pallet was not part of the original plan. It became necessary due to a disrupted spacewalking schedule caused by the failed launch of a Soyuz rocket in 2018. This incident forced NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin to make an emergency landing in the Kazakh steppe, leading to a backlog in the disposal of equipment. Normally, old batteries would be placed inside an HTV and jettisoned from the ISS to burn up on reentry.
However, due to the rescheduled spacewalks and the unavailability of HTVs of the old design, the decision was made to independently jettison the pallet. This pending uncontrolled reentry serves as a reminder of the challenges and complexities involved in managing and adapting space missions. It marks the conclusion of this particular story, with the hope that the falling fragments do not cause harm or damage any property.
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