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 debris satellite was struck by an unknown object and rendered inoperable; its engineers had enough contact time with the satellite to send it into a graveyard orbit. In 1958, the United States launched Vanguard I into a medium Earth orbit (MEO). , it, and the upper stage of its launch rocket, are the oldest surviving man-made space objects still in orbit. In a catalog of known launches until July 2009, the Union of Concerned Scientists listed 902 operational satellites from a known population of 19,000 large objects and about 30,000 objects launched. An example of additional dead satellite debris are the