Yes, the US Congress can give instructions to NASA, but half the ISS is run by the Russian Government.
NB: I am only discussing Russian modules here, NASA and its suppliers have already demonstrated the ability to build, launch and maintain the American modules.
The Russians wanted to quit the ISS in 2024, subsequently extended to 2028 at which point Unity and Zarya will be 30 years old. Zvezda, launched 2000, has had a persistent air leak in the transfer tunnel since 2019. While repairs have been made, the leak continues and has caused increased concern due to, at times, rising, significant air loss. Zarya was designed for a minimal operational lifespan of 15 years, while Zvezda, originally built for the Mir program had a designed minimal operational lifespan of 5 years, Mir itself was still OK after 15 years, but by 2030 Zvezda will have been operating for twice that long. When talking about the proposed extension from 2024, Space Policy Online site reports "Roscosmos initially declined to agree to the extension in part because it was waiting for a review by its engineers of the status of the hardware, which TASS said today was completed in February."
Other than operational life of the segments, the other risks are orbital corrections and deorbiting. Fortunately NASA and its suppliers already have orbital boost and plans for deorbiting.
Traditionally boost and other orbital corrections were performed by Progress Rockets docked to the aft port of Zvezda but SpaceX Dragon and Cygnus Cargo Vehicle craft also have that capability, and dock at the nadir port of Harmony so this can be maintained if Zvezda ceases to be operational.
Finally, deorbiting. Had the Russians committed to the 2032 date, the plan was to use multiple Progress cargo vehicles docked to the station, without the Russians the plan is to use a (single?) SpaceX Cargo Dragon.
The above was mostly assembled from multiple Wikipedia pages
"115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639936 bytes should be enough for anyone." Bill Gates.
Yes, my (dormant) blogs were hand written long before LLMs were easily available to the public, but if I feel like adding something it will be something I've hand written (typed?).
The difficulty is having people find your content in a sea of LLM generated content when the most used search engine is also now given over to LLM rather than providing valuable content.
If you must write in a language that often looks like line-noise, try one that was designed to look that way
ChatGPT prompt "please write me a short program in Intercal that calculates and outputs the first 20 prime numbers
ChatGPT Response: Below is a working INTERCAL program (tested for C-INTERCAL dialect) that calculates and outputs the first 20 prime numbers. It uses a very basic trial-division algorithm and outputs each prime on its own line.
PLEASE DO
PLEASE DO
PLEASE DO
PLEASE DO
PLEASE DO
(100) PLEASE DO
PLEASE DO
PLEASE DO
(200) PLEASE IF
PLEASE IF
PLEASE DO
PLEASE RESUME (200)
(250) PLEASE DO
(300) PLEASE IF
PLEASE RESUME (100)
(400) PLEASE DO
PLEASE WRITE OUT
PLEASE IF
PLEASE GIVE UP
I haven't checked, but I believe there are too many "Please"s in this which will generate a "err: code insincere"
Zvezda was originally built in the mid 1980s by the USSR to be the core of Mir-2 then mothballed until it was repurposed and modified for the ISS. I can't find a good source for the design service life of Mir-2 was, but Space.com says Mir had an intended lifespan of 5 years and Astronautix says Mir-2 also had an intended service life of 5 years.
Mir was in orbit for 15 years, three times its design life and by the mid 1990s the cooling and Elektron oxygen generating systems were starting to break down . Next month Zvezda will have been in orbit for 25 years, probably five times its design life.
I find it amazing that it is still functioning as well as it is, but ???
In 1988 CSRG, University of California, Berkeley released 4.3BSD Tahoe which IIRC was the first port they made of BSD to a non-DEC processor.
CM Mach and 4.3BSD Tahoe were the parents of NeXTSTEP (1989) which when merged with Classic Mac OS and refreshed with more recent Mach & BSD implementations through Darwin (2000) ultimately gave us the modern Mac operating systems.
In 2025 we learn that the Tahoe name has been dusted off for the last portable version of macOS.
I'm loving the irony.
"Live or die, I'll make a million." -- Reebus Kneebus, before his jump to the center of the earth, Firesign Theater