After being in orbit for nearly 25 years, NASA has announced its unsurprisingly complex plan to crash the International Space Station into the Pacific Ocean by 2031. The budding astronauts out there needn’t fear, however, as the folks at Airbus have been working hard on how to replace it and have just announced the LOOP “Space Station of the future”.
If your milk is a day old, you might risk it on your cereal, but you probably wouldn’t expect NASA to make even braver gambles with the structural integrity of its space stations. Believe it or not, the ISS only had a projected 15-year lifespan, which it has nearly overshot by a decade and brings up the reason behind the planned Airbus LOOP space station.
Designed to make long trips in space as comfortable as possible, the LOOP is designed to house four astronauts and will be able to exist as a multi-purpose orbital module in both Low-Earth and Lunar Orbit flights, as well as possibly even serving as a stop on a trip to Mars. With a diameter of 8m and covering three levels (the Habitation Deck, a Science Deck and a Centrifuge), it features a greenhouse tunnel through its core that doubles as the passage between levels.
There’s no word if or when the Airbus LOOP space station will actually get off the ground, but with the current ISS scheduled for a wet landing in about seven and a half years, they’re no doubt working on lift-off as you read this.
