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
Space manufacturing Facility was carried into orbit by the Space Shuttle. This demonstration platform used the vacuum created in the orbital wake to manufacture thin films of gallium arsenide and aluminum gallium arsenide. On May 31, 2005, the recoverable, unmanned Foton-M2 laboratory was launched into orbit. Among the experiments were crystal growth and the behavior of molten-metal in weightlessness. The completion of the International Space Station has provided expanded and improved facilities for performing industrial research. These have and will continue to lead to improvements in our knowledge of materials sciences, new manufacturing techniques on Earth, and potentially some important discoveries in