Point Nemo is a remote spot in the sea, farthest away from land. It’s also known as the Spacecraft Cemetery as it houses dead spacecraft. Point Nemo is located at coordinates 48°52.6′S 123°23.6’W, halfway between New Zealand and Chile.
The place where spacecraft go to die — Point Nemo — is a real place. It’s called by many names, and depending on your perspective it can be considered either the most remote place in the universe or not so remote at all.
Point nemo spacecraft cemetery
Point Nemo is a desolate region of space, also known as the Oceanic Pole of inaccessibility (I could go off on a tangent about the literal ocean being more accessible than the “inaccessible” regions of space, but I’d rather be tangential). It has received quite a bit of press recently thanks to its burgeoning “spacecraft cemetery”. Astrophysicist Kevin Grazier talked about it during his talk at the 100 Year Starship Symposium. NASA put together a webpage about it here.
Point Nemo is the name given to a collection of around 250 spacecraft orbiting in our solar system. This area of space lies between the orbits of Jupiter and Earth and is out of reach for any known future repair or interstellar missions. The Point Nemo Cemetary is vast with over 100,000 objects and counting. Many remain intact but some have been damaged and completely destroyed. In total, an estimated 5,000 satellites, upper stages, boosters, and other human-made space debris fill the sky near Point Nemo in a region about ten times the volume of Earth’s orbit.
Located in Earth’s orbit above a lonely point, Point Nemo is the furthest you can get from Earth without falling into the Sun. The spacecraft graveyard, called CEME (short for Comet Encke Memorial Earth), honours the remains of satellite-launcher rockets and spacecraft that have fallen into disrepair past this point. This place holds the remains of over fifteen thousand spacecraft’s components and its location is marked as 40 degrees 41 minutes 57 seconds North, 73 degrees 11 minutes 32 seconds West.
Point Nemo: Where Spacecraft Go to Die.
Since the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, several thousand manmade devices have been sent into Earth’s orbit. A return trip was never in the cards for many of them. Broken satellites, abandoned rockets and assorted bits of mission-related garbage are now whizzing around our planet at frighteningly high speeds. Some objects may be traveling faster than 16,777 miles per hour (27,000 kilometers per hour). And the trash begets trash. Collisions can generate even more debris as useless bits of junk violently smack into each other.
This is a serious problem for a world that’s grown dependent on telecommunications and GPS signals. More than one active satellite has been destroyed by space debris and many more will doubtless meet the same fate.
We haven’t come up with a perfect solution yet — but there are ways to remove some of the orbiting bodies that’ve outlived their usefulness. For almost half a century now, space agencies have been instructing old satellites and decommissioned vessels to crash-land in a remote part of the South Pacific.
The area’s known as a “spacecraft cemetery.” It encompasses a geographic place of interest known as Point Nemo (a Latin word meaning “nobody”), and it’s the furthest you can get from dry land without leaving Earth. It’s about 2,500 miles (4,023 kilometers) east of New Zealand and the closest landmasses are the islands of Ducie, Moto Nui and Maher. So when a doomed spacecraft is sent there, the chances of it hitting a person — or even a passing boat — are pretty darn slim.
The cemetery received its first decommissioned spacecraft in 1971. More than 260 others have subsequently been laid to rest there, with the majority being of Russian origin. None can match the prestige, though, of Mir, the Soviet-built precursor to the International Space Station (ISS) that cruised above Earth from 1986 to 2001.
Of course, the Mir’s no longer in mint condition. When it received instructions to land in the vicinity of Point Nemo in March 2001, the space station broke apart in its rocky descent through Earth’s atmosphere. Many components burned up in the process and the six main fragments that remain are scattered across a wide expanse of sea floor. The same thing happened to the European Jules Verne spacecraft, the Progress cargo ship and countless other denizens of the deep-sea burial ground.
Getting a spacecraft to land anywhere takes a lot of skill and precise calculations. Space agencies must remain in contact with their vessels in order to send up guidance instructions. Once that degree of control is lost, a craft is liable to wind up anywhere.
If you lived through the space race, you might remember how NASA’s Skylab unexpectedly crash-landed in western Australia in 1979. By the same token, nobody knew where the Chinese Tiangong-1 orbital lab would come to rest after it stopped working properly in March 2016. In what the press called a “near amazing coincidence,” the 8-and-a-half-ton (7.7-metric ton) lab crash landed April 1, 2018 in South Pacific waters — narrowly missing Point Nemo as it fell.
Now That’s Interesting
In 2031, NASA plans to plunge the International Space Station into the waters of Point Nemo, after more than 30 years of service. The ISS will not last forever, but NASA expects to be able to operate it safely through 2030.
Originally Published: Apr 19, 2018
Point Nemo FAQ
Where is Point Nemo?
Point Nemo is the furthest you can get from dry land without leaving Earth. It’s about 2,500 miles (4,023 kilometers) east of New Zealand and the closest landmasses are the islands of Ducie, Moto Nui and Maher.
What is Point Nemo?
For almost half a century now, space agencies have been instructing old satellites and decommissioned vessels to crash-land in this remote part of the South Pacific.
What is the spacecraft cemetery and why is it needed?
Point Nemo is known as the spacecraft cemetery because it’s where space agencies instruct old satellites and decommissioned vessels to crash-land.
Does anyone live on Point Nemo?
No. In fact, The closest humans to Point Nemo are often astronauts in space.
When did they start using Point Nemo?
The cemetery received its first decommissioned spacecraft in 1971. More than 260 others have subsequently been laid to rest there, with the majority being of Russian origin.
The space cemetery, named for the fictional captain in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, is where the International Space Station is likely to end up
Tory ShepherdFri 3 Sep 2021 21.00 BST
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At the furthest point from any landmass on earth, and 4km under the sea, lies the space cemetery.
When their outer space journeys come to an end, old satellites, rocket parts and space stations are sent to this desolate spot in the Pacific Ocean to rest on the dark seabed forever.
The technical name for this stretch of water is the “ocean point of inaccessibility” because it lies about 2,700km from any land. But it is more commonly known as the space cemetery, or Point Nemo – named for the fictional submarine captain in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
It’s here that the International Space Station, the football-field-sized laboratory orbiting Earth, is likely to end up. Reports emerged this week of cracks in the ISS and while the fissures may not spell its imminent demise, it is certainly in its twilight years.
When spacecraft die, they become a danger to everything else in orbit. Space debris is rapidly clogging up space, and at orbital speeds of up to 17,500km/h even tiny flecks of paint can cause serious damage to other spacecraft.
According to Nasa, there are thousands of bits of space junk out there.
“There is so much junk that we are worried one tiny collision could trigger a big chain reaction. This possibility is called the ‘Kessler Effect’,” Nasa says.
The Kessler Effect, or Kessler Syndrome, is the potential for the amount of debris in orbit to reach a critical mass where each collision creates more pieces of debris in a cascading way, to the point where the orbit is no longer usable.
“To prevent such a disaster, anyone launching something into orbit these days has to have a plan to either send it into a graveyard orbit, or send it back down to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere,” Nasa says.
Very high satellites can be blasted further into space, out of harm’s way, with the last of their fuel – that’s the “graveyard orbit”. Closer satellites can be nudged out of orbit, and the smaller ones will burn up entirely on re-entry. Those that don’t burn can crash to Earth in an “unplanned” trajectory (like China’s Long March 5B rocket, or the Skylab space station, which hit Western Australia). But it is generally preferable that, instead of potentially careening into inhabited land, the debris is carefully guided to splash down at Point Nemo.
A watery grave
As the European Space Agency explains, modelling is used to pick the point at which a craft will hit the upper atmosphere, and doing that at a calculated and steep angle ensures debris will fall within a certain zone.
In 2001, the Russian space station Mir reached the end of its useful life. A cargo ship docked to the craft fired its engines to take Mir out of orbit and back to Earth. Parts burned up on re-entry, while up to 25 tonnes survived, and plummeted to its watery grave at Point Nemo.
Since then, Mir has been joined by defunct satellites, rocket parts and even an automated transfer vehicle that delivered cargo to the International Space Station – an ATV called the Jules Verne.Advertisement
The spacecraft that have survived space, and the fiery descent into Earth’s atmosphere, are hardy enough to resist the crushing pressure 4km (one league) down.
One day in the not-too-distant future, the International Space Station is likely to join them. The ISS has been orbiting Earth since 1998, when Russia, the US, Canada, Japan and several European countries began the joint venture. It has been home to astronauts since 2000.
Initially, it was only expected to last for 15 years. Now, it’s authorised to operate until at least 2024. But the ISS is showing its age.
Just over a week ago, the Nasa spokeswoman Angela Hart told CNBC that although Nasa is still “actively working to continue to do science and research … the ISS at some point will have its end of life”.
This week the Russian official Vladimir Solovyov said most of its in-flight systems were past their expiry dates, which could lead to “irreparable failures”.
The BBC reported a range of other issues, from air leaks to malfunctions and “structural fatigue”.
‘There will be fears’
The space archaeologist Alice Gorman, from Flinders University, says the ISS has done well to last this long, but it is getting on.
Luckily, humans have learned a lot about de-orbiting spacecraft. European Space Agency engineers have observed supply modules de-orbiting and re-entering, and built up data about how to ensure a controlled re-entry.
“People involved would acknowledge that at some point it will come to an end,” she says of the ISS. “But it has been planned for.”
One of the tricky things, Gorman says, is that the ISS is a beast of many parts. There are various modules where the six astronauts live, and others that function as laboratories. There are solar arrays and robot arms on the outside. Nasa says it is as big as an American football field, with bathrooms, a gymnasium and a big bay window.
“If they do have to separate some of the modules from each other, that’s likely to create some debris,” Gorman says. “People will be watching that process. There’s a keener sensibility about leaving stuff in orbit these days.
“As it enters the atmosphere it will start to break up – one reason Point Nemo is a good place is that the debris footprint, from the first bit to the last bit, can be kilometres and kilometres long.Advertisement
“But there will be fears. What if something goes wrong? What if they don’t predict it accurately?”
When Long March 5B made its out-of-control descent, there were fears not just about the dangers of it hitting someone, but that there might be toxic propellants still on board.
Gorman says that could be the case even with a controlled descent, but that “by the time it comes screaming in through the atmosphere all the volatile fuels have gone”. And what survives to settle in the space cemetery will be safe materials such as stainless steel, titanium alloys and ceramics.
And she paints a peaceful ending to that hectic journey from outer space to the deep blue sea.
“We send it down to the bottom of the ocean,” she says. “And like shipwrecks the world over it becomes a habitat, a coral reef. A whole new life.”
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