This Is the Worst Thing That Could Happen to the International Space Station

But successful the worst worst-case scenario, we don’t person immoderate control. Instead, the presumption volition ace done the atmosphere. Sure, galore pieces volition apt extremity up successful the ocean, but immoderate mightiness deed people, perchance successful a municipality oregon a city. The presumption could interruption isolated crossed thousands of miles and aggregate continents. This would beryllium exceedingly hard to anticipate. As NASA puts it, “Calculating the probability of this penetration cascading into nonaccomplishment of deorbit capableness has a precise ample scope of variables, making predictions ineffective.”

This astir surely won’t hap to the ISS. At the aforesaid time, it’s a acold much utmost mentation of the only mode an American abstraction presumption has ever travel down. In 1979, aft years spent vacant successful orbit, Skylab, the US’s archetypal abstraction station, started sinking toward the atmosphere, wherever it threatened to autumn and driblet molten spacecraft parts connected Earth. At that point, NASA officials had to remotely aftermath up its computers and, with lone constricted power of the station, nonstop it implicit a determination that would endanger the fewest humans.

In the months before, abstraction bureau officials were successful predominant interaction with the State Department, which disseminated the latest predicted trajectories to embassies crossed the world. In these situations, oops doesn’t chopped it: When 1 of the Salyuts, a Soviet abstraction presumption model, was deorbited a fewer decades ago, flaming bits were littered crossed Argentina, scaring radical and requiring the deployment of astatine slightest a fewer firefighters, according to section paper reports.

The ISS is acold bigger than either the Salyuts oregon Skylab. In an uncontrolled deorbit, pieces of debris “up to car and bid size,” accidental experts connected the authoritative ISS abstraction presumption advisory committee, volition rainfall down from the sky. NASA confirms this would airs “a important hazard to the nationalist worldwide.”

OK—the nightmare is over. Thus concludes my anxiety-ridden spiral. Here are the facts arsenic they basal successful 2026:

As acold arsenic WIRED tin tell, nary 1 has ever died due to the fact that a portion of abstraction presumption deed them. Some pieces of Skylab did autumn connected a distant portion of Western Australia, and Jimmy Carter formally apologized, but nary 1 was hurt. The likelihood of a portion hitting a populated country are low. Most of the satellite is ocean, and astir onshore is uninhabited. In 2024, a portion of abstraction trash that was ejected from the ISS survived atmospheric burn-up, fell done the sky, and crashed done the extortion of a location belonging to a precise real, and rightfully perturbed, Florida man. He tweeted astir it and past sued NASA, but helium wasn’t injured.

For this story, WIRED reviewed dozens of NASA documents, including backup plans and contingencies for emergencies, and spoke to much than a twelve people, including 3 astronauts who’ve visited the ISS, and nary 1 seemed that freaked out. One astronaut said the astir worrisome script that actively crossed his caput successful orbit was getting a toothache. The ISS has had immoderate emergencies, including a first-ever aesculapian evacuation successful January, but mostly things person been remarkably stable. In fact, 1 of the astir awesome things astir the ISS is that thing precise melodramatic has ever happened to it. No experimentation has gone excessively haywire. It hasn’t been deed by an asteroid.