NASA To Crash ISS Into The Ocean (With No One On Board, Of Course)

NASA has announced it will retire the International Space Station in the next decade, and it's making a very big splash when that happens. NASA announced this week that it will retire the ISS in 2031 and aim the craft at a remote part of the Pacific Ocean for its water landing. Let's just hope it hits the target, but don't worry: No one will be on board!

Working with three Russian Progress spacecraft, NASA will "de-orbit" the ISS at a place in the South Pacific Ocean known as Point Nemo in January 2031, according to CNN.

NASA says the ISS is "busier than ever" these days, with "hundreds" of studies and experiments being conducted aboard the ship. The space agency said the work that's being done on the spacecraft will contribute to sending the first woman and person of color to the Moon, along with the first humans to go to Mars.

After 2030, the private sector will take over on any future space station efforts, in conjunction with NASA's own teams. NASA director Phil McAlister said in a news release, "We look forward to sharing our lessons learned and operations experience with the private sector to help them develop safe, reliable, and cost-effective destinations in space."

The ISS was first launched into space in November 1998, with the lab element of it coming online in 2000. It is 227 nautical miles above Earth. More than 200 astronauts from 19 countries have spent time board the craft. NASA's Mark T. Vande Hei is currently aboard the ISS and will stay there until March 2022, for a total trip spanning 353 days.

The ISS' re-entry to Earth should be uneventful. The same can't be said for the new movie Moonfall, in which the Moon falls into a collision course with Earth and threatens to kill everyone on the planet.