NASA said Tuesday it has chosen SpaceX to build the vehicle that will carry the International Space Station from Earth’s atmosphere to its final resting place in the Pacific Ocean after it is decommissioned in 2030. Elon Musk’s company has signed a contract with a potential value of $843 million for the development and delivery of a spacecraft called the US Deorbit Vehicle.

“Selecting an American orbital lander for the International Space Station will help NASA and its international partners ensure a safe and responsible transition to low Earth orbit after the station is completed,” NASA’s Ken Bowersox said in a statement.

NASA plans to take ownership of the spacecraft after SpaceX builds it and oversee operations for the duration of the mission. The ISS weighs 430,000 kilograms (950,000 lb) and is currently the largest single structure ever built in space.

Based on past observations of how other stations, such as Mir and Skylab, have disintegrated during re-entry, NASA engineers expect the orbital outpost to disintegrate in three stages. First, the massive solar panels and radiators that cool the orbiting laboratory will separate, then individual modules will separate from the station’s truss, or backbone, structure. Finally, the truss and modules themselves will break.

Most of the material will evaporate, but large pieces are expected to survive, so NASA is targeting Point Nemo, one of the most remote parts of the world in the Pacific Ocean and known as the graveyard of satellites and spacecraft.

The first segment of the ISS was launched in 1998 and has been manned continuously by an international crew since 2001. Although the United States, Japan, Canada and member states of the European Space Agency (ESA) have committed to the microgravity laboratory by 2030, the fifth partner, Russia, has only committed until 2028.

NASA chief Bill Nelson told Congress in April that, given the dire state of U.S.-Russia relations, it would be prudent to begin work on a U.S. orbital launcher that would “safely crash the entire station so it doesn’t hit anyone or anything.” Several companies, including Axiom Space and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, are working on commercial successors to the ISS.