International Space Station program with on-orbit refurbishment in mind. According to the Outer Space Treaty the United States is legally responsible for all modules it has launched. In ISS planning, NASA examined options including returning the station to Earth via shuttle missions (deemed too expensive, as the station(USOS) is not designed for disassembly and this would require at least 27 shuttle missions), natural orbital decay with random reentry similar to Skylab, boosting the station to a higher altitude (which would simply delay reentry) and a controlled targeted de-orbit to a remote ocean area. The technical feasibility of a controlled targeted deorbit into a remote
Chinese large modular space station Chinese large modular space station The Chinese large modular space station is a planned space station to be placed in Low Earth orbit. The planned Chinese Space Station will be roughly one-fifth the mass of the International Space Station and about the size of the decommissioned Russian Mir space station. The Chinese station is expected to have a mass between 80 to 100 metric tons. Operations will be controlled from the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center in China. The planned launch date of the core module, the "Tianhe-1" (“Harmony of the Heavens”), is 2020. In 2017, the Chinese launched