International Space Station To Retire In 2030 After 30 Years Of Service, Leaving A Global Legacy

The International Space Station (ISS), one of humanity's greatest achievements in space, is set to end its mission in 2030. It will be safely brought down over the Pacific Ocean, closing a remarkable chapter in space exploration, reported Space.com.

By then, the ISS will have hosted humans continuously for 30 years, starting on November 2, 2000, when one astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts first arrived at the half-built station.

For many years, the International Space Station (ISS) has been a symbol of human cooperation and courage. But as its journey in low Earth orbit nears its end, discussions about its true contribution and scientific significance have intensified.

Many people will feel its end emotionally, much like the end of a beloved Mars rover mission. While new space stations may be built in the future, they won't be like this one.

Not everyone sees the end of the ISS as a loss. Paola Castano-Rodriguez, a sociologist at the University of Exeter, says that for some, the ISS has been a wasteful project from the start.

Castano-Rodriguez studies the impact of scientific research and global collaboration on the ISS. She is writing a book called Beyond the Lab- The Social Lives of Experiments on the International Space Station.

In it, she looks at three major experiments on the station, the first space-grown lettuce experiment, the Twins experiment involving astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly, and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment conducted outside the station.

Critics argue that the ISS has been extremely expensive. It cost around $150 billion to build and operate, and NASA spends about $3 billion every year to maintain it.

With such a large investment, the station was expected to lead to groundbreaking discoveries. When it was launched in the 1990s, scientists promised that experiments there could help find cures for cancer or solve the mysteries of dark matter.

Castano-Rodriguez says the problem lies in how the station's goals were originally presented. Scientists made ambitious promises to secure funding, and today these promises are used as the standard to judge its success. She believes the ISS's real value depends on who is looking at it and from what perspective.

If judged only by major scientific discoveries, the ISS might seem disappointing. NASA reports that more than 4,000 experiments have been conducted on the station over 25 years, leading to about 4,400 research papers. However, most of the results have been incremental rather than revolutionary.

According to Castano-Rodriguez , its greatest success is the spirit of global cooperation. By bringing together scientists and countries from around the world, the ISS has turned space into not just a research hub but a living laboratory of human collaboration. When the ISS ends its mission in 2030, it will leave a legacy not only of experiments and data but of humanity's shared effort, which helped define an entire era of space exploration.