International Space Station program ocean was found to be possible only with Russia's assistance. At the time ISS was launched, the Russian Space Agency had experience from de-orbiting the Salyut 4, 5, 6, and 7 space stations, while NASA's first intentional controlled de-orbit of a satellite (the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory) would not occur for another two years. NASA currently has no spacecraft capable of de-orbiting the ISS at the time of decommissioning. Skylab, the only space station built and launched entirely by the US, decayed from orbit slowly over 5 years, and no attempt was made to de-orbit the station using a deorbital
Paper plane launched from space Paper plane launched from space Japanese scientists and origami masters considered in 2008 launching a flotilla of paper planes from space. The launch was tentatively slated for 2009 from the International Space Station 250 miles above Earth. However, the planes' developers, Takuo Toda (see paper plane world records) and fellow enthusiast Shinji Suzuki, an aeronautical engineer and professor at Tokyo University, postponed the attempt after acknowledging it would be all but impossible to track the planes during their week-long journey to Earth, assuming any of them survived the searing descent. The developers continue, in 2009, with hopes that China or