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
Plants in space plants in space, were the trees on the brick moon space station, in the 1869 short story "The Brick Moon". In the 2010s there was an increased desire for long-term space missions, which lead to desire for space-based plant production as food for astronauts. An example of this is vegetable production on the International Space Station in Earth orbit. By the year 2010, 20 plant growth experiments had been conducted aboard the international Space Station.. Several experiments have been focused on how plant growth and distribution compares in micro-gravity, space conditions versus Earth conditions. This enables scientists to explore whether