When it finally burns up in Earth's atmosphere in 2030, the International Space Station will take more with it than hardware and experiments. This orbiting laboratory has been flying for thirty years as a symbol of cooperation, ambition, and persistence. Its fiery demise will signify not just the loss of a scientific outpost but the closing of a remarkable chapter in human history.
What Will Humanity Lose When the ISS Falls?
The ISS has continuously hosted astronauts and cosmonauts since Expedition 1 docked in November 2000. It has been a home, a workplace, and a shared dream for people from across the globe. Yet, as its deorbit draws closer, questions remain about what it truly achieved and what its disappearance will mean.
To some, the ISS is progress and partnership in space; to others, an expensive symbol of ambition that never quite lived up to the promise. Sociologist Paola Castaño-Rodriguez of the University of Exeter says opinions about the ISS depend on who defines “we”. She argues that while enthusiasts celebrate it, many see it as an extravagant investment.
Castaño-Rodriguez, who studies how science is practised on the ISS, explores these themes in her forthcoming book Beyond the Lab: The Social Lives of Experiments on the International Space Station. Her research follows stories such as the first lettuce grown in orbit, the twin experiment with Mark and Scott Kelly, and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer attached to the station’s hull.
Was the Space Station Worth the Cost?
The estimated cost to build and operate the ISS has been roughly $150 billion, with NASA annually spending $3 billion to maintain it. With such a huge investment, critics wonder whether the scientific output justified the expense. For instance, early promises suggested that the station’s research might help to cure cancer or even uncover dark matter. Those grand expectations, Castaño-Rodriguez says, shaped how the ISS has been judged ever since.
In reality, the station’s scientific achievements have been quieter but still significant. Over 4,000 experiments have been conducted in orbit, producing more than 4,400 research papers. Most of the discoveries have been incremental, rather than revolutionary. But the real value, says Castaño-Rodriguez, may lie in what happened behind the scenes—processes, cooperation, and skills needed to do science in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet.
What comes after the ISS?
NASA intends to replace the ISS with commercial space stations in partnership with Axiom Space, Blue Origin, and Starlab Space. These new stations will carry forward much of the expertise developed through the ISS programme. However, concerns remain about whether the open and collaborative spirit of the ISS will continue.
Castaño-Rodriguez warns that commercialization might bring a loss of transparency and limit access to data. Today, ISS experiments are publicly funded, and their data are freely available to researchers worldwide. That openness, she argues, has been central to the station’s global identity. “You don’t have to be in spaceflight to analyse the data,” she said. “This open science is a vital part of the station’s history.”
Commercial stations could still offer opportunities for international collaboration. Axiom Space, for example, has already flown astronauts from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, allowing nations to participate as paying partners. Still, Castaño-Rodriguez notes that this arrangement is different from the unique partnerships born under the multinational structure of ISS.
Will the Spirit of Cooperation Survive?
Born in the 1990s after decades of Cold War rivalry, the ISS represented a rare period of trust between former adversaries. It was the place where astronauts and cosmonauts who had once trained as military opponents learned to work side by side. Even now, with global tensions again rising amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, that cooperation has endured on the station.
Castaño-Rodriguez believes this shared experience may be the ISS’s greatest legacy — a social and scientific experiment in how humanity can work together beyond Earth. “When we lose the ISS, we’ll lose more than a laboratory,” she said. “We’ll lose a symbol of collaboration that was unique to its time.”
As part of her research, she has interviewed nearly a hundred astronauts, engineers and scientists who have lived the ISS story. One of them, cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, part of the very first expedition, offered a reflection that sums up the station’s true meaning.
“When I asked him if he remembered any experiments,” Castaño-Rodriguez recalled, “he looked at me and said, ‘The space station is the experiment.’”
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