How long will astronauts live on ISS if the world's end happens?

Recently, the saga of the return home from space of NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who stayed on the ISS for nine months instead of the planned eight days, has come to an end. Because of this situation, some inquiring minds might have wondered how long the astronauts would be able to survive on the ISS if a global catastrophe were to occur on Earth.

LADbible writes about this.

How long will astronauts live on the ISS if all people on Earth disappear?

YouTuber and teacher Vsauce decided to explain this. He said that oxygen for breathing is recycled on the ISS through electrolysis, while normalized nutrition will help astronauts last about two years before they feel hungry, depending on when the last supply ship docks.

NASA has previously stated that all food sent into space has a shelf life of at least one year. Given the scenario in which astronauts may find themselves, expired food will not be at the top of the list of problems.

It has happened that astronauts on the ISS have spent eight months without replenishment, so there are real scenarios when they have had to do without supplies from Earth.

If lack of food and air cannot kill space explorers, what can? There is a certain process called orbital decay.

The blogger says that the ISS can survive for about 15 months before crashing to Earth. The station orbits at an altitude of about 418 km but descends closer to the planet due to the combination of the Earth's gravitational pull and low oxygen levels, which slows the ship's movement.

In such conditions, the ISS orbit is usually returned to the correct course with periodic adjustments from supply ships. NASA, according to the Space Station Transition Plan until 2024, predicts that the ISS will be able to operate without adjustments for about one to two years before it burns up in the atmosphere, which means that Vsauce's prediction was correct.

As a reminder, the eighth test flight of the Starship rocket by SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, ended in an explosion.

We also wrote that NASA and Nokia have installed the 4G LTE system on the Moon. It is called Lunar Surface and should provide high-speed communication between the lunar rovers and landing modules.