NASA responds to rumours of “uncontrolled de-orbit and catastrophic failure” of ISS

As is the way in the modern world, it all started with a Tweet. A simple message accompanied with a blurry screenshot of a message board, on Elon Musk’s social media platform with the words: "Rumor mill is saying the ISS is going to crash soon via de-orbit“.

A few hours and almost 1 million views later, the state of the largest space station ever built was firmly being questioned by plenty of people online, all of course who knew better than both NASA and their Russian equivalent, Roscosmos, along with the European Space Agency, JAXA (Japan) and the CSA of Canada.

“FEMA anon here”, the worded message from the 4chan online forum begins. You may have heard of the Federal Emergency Management Agency being talked about during and after natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes, or may have even heard a representative speak when the world gets tetchy over Kim Jong Un’s whereabouts in a Korean cave. FEMA do what you think they do: they plan for emergencies and how to manage them.

'Not some hairline bullshit, we’re talking catastrophic failure'

“Posting this before the higher-ups lock everything down. Shits going sideways with the ISS”. I’m not William Shakespeare, but if I’m going to be the only person in the world willing to speak out about what may be one of the most catastrophic humanist tragedies of modern times, I’d like to think I’d know where to put an apostrophe.

It continues: “We got a briefing this morning: major structural crack detected. Not some hairline bullshit, we’re talking catastrophic failure levels. They’re scrambling, but it’s too late. They tried to patch it a few months ago but it’s worse than they thought”.

Here comes the best part: “Chain reaction started last night. No official word yet, but deorbit is happening, uncontrolled. NASA and Roscosmos are freaking out. They’re gonna spin it like they planned this, but I’m telling you now, this is an emergency. 5km per month is the current deorbit rate”. Thankfully, the message ends there.

It wasn’t long before NASA themselves responded to the tweet from the Google whistleblower’s account - with 164k followers - that posted the screenshot: “The International @Space_Station continues to orbit the Earth as planned, and the crew aboard is safe. You can track the space station’s current path anytime..."

The International Space station, which orbits the planet in just over 90 minutes per day from a altitude of around 400 kilometres (250 mi), is due to be de-orbited in 2030 in a specialised NASA project. As for a location, Point Nemo in the Pacific Ocean has been suggested as the final resting place of one of humankind’s most staggering feats of collaboration and engineering.

Space debris has long been a foe of the 26-year-old space station, and it’s true that recently reports have emerged of various faults with the ISS, ranging from cracks in robotic arms to small window issues. As well as this, astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, along with Russia’s cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, have had their return date pushed back from February 2025 to March due to technical issues. Their original 8-day mission has lasted for more than 9 months.

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