Couldn’t we put it in a super long orbit that means it will revisit earth in a million years or something? Might be a nice surprise for whoever is around at that point.
> Decommissioning by boosting an object to a higher “graveyard” orbit to extend orbital lifetime is often done with smaller satellites operating near geostationary orbits (~36,000 km in altitude). This is not a realistic target for space station decommissioning because of the large mass of the space station and distance from its operational altitude to a “graveyard” orbit. Existing propulsive assets (spacecraft) do not have the capability to raise the space station’s altitude to such a high target.
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/faqs-the-international-space-station-tr...
Orbits get somewhat emptier beyond 2500km altitude, but you'd still risk spent rocket stages or defunct satellites hitting the ISS if you don't go all the way out beyond geostationary. Maybe you can stay at lower orbits if you dock a vehicle that can provide thrust for obstacle avoidance even after the main station powers off.
Original plain AFAIR was to use several Progress vehicles.
And going to graveyard orbit with something like ISS is not just a few whole times more difficult but at least an order of magnitude more.
Ten Falcon 9s (with 8 tonnes to GEO each, expended) couldn’t move it into a parking orbit. There literally isn’t enough current lifting capacity on Earth to do this.
Or pack it inside otherwise empty Starships a few segments at a time and fly it down intact to put in a museum.
Boosting it all the way up to a more long-term graveyard orbit (i.e. several hundred kilometers) would consume a lot of fuel compared to a planned deorbit.
The ISS rather has very low power relative to its mass. About 1/50th the power/mass ratio of the Dawn probe, for instance. This approach would take multiple decades, with the ISS as it currently is.
It's worth remarking there's never been a spacecraft to date that's attempted a solar-electric spiral out starting from low Earth orbit. (The Boeing 702 satellites can spiral from GTO to GEO at least—though those have, again, far higher power/mass ratios than the ISS).
https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-deple...
https://www.space.com/deorbiting-impact-on-earth-atmosphere-...
That's not “a bit” and the fact that it’s the ISS and not a typical satellite is among the reasons it is impractical.
*(The engineering here is not very simple)