The International Space Station will one day be destroyed by fire

The International Space Station (ISS), 400 kilometers from Earth.

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Twenty years after the arrival of the first astronauts on board, the International Space Station is far from over.

The ISS is designed to house humans until 2028, although the agreement between the countries that operate it does not run until 2024. This does not prevent experts from NASA and the Russian agency Roscosmos to study the best way to destroy the station.

Experts began to look into the subject about five years ago, according to American astronomer Jonathan McDowell quoted by 

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Engineers have long ignored the question of its destruction but are now studying several scenarios for taking the space station out of orbit, whether it is planned or in response to an incident.

Because of its weight - 400 tonnes - the ISS could not fall back to Earth as it is without a significant risk to the population.

Its mass also makes it impossible to completely carbonize at a rate that would be that of its uncontrolled fall.

The scientists' plan is therefore to direct the descent of the ISS.

They would set off fires on board for that.

Two weeks of preparation minimum

The station would thus lose altitude and would approach our atmosphere in which its entry would be easier to control.

In particular, specialists could cause debris resulting from the destruction of the ISS in the atmosphere to crash into the southern Pacific Ocean, a sparsely populated region.

The initiation of the out of orbit process could be decided well in advance.

In case of emergency, however, the specificities of the station would only leave engineers two weeks to decide, experts estimated at the International Astronautical Congress in 2017.

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