Spaceship graveyard in the South Pacific: coordinates. Where on earth is the spaceship graveyard

More than 15.5 thousand artificial satellites now revolve around the Earth. Here are military vehicles, and weather stations, and communications and telecommunications satellites. All this scrap metal sooner or later falls to Earth. But not just like that, but to a certain place on our planet. It's called Point Nemo. This is the real cemetery. spaceships.

Ways to dispose of spacecraft

To begin with, let's clarify a little how the "write-off" and disposal takes place. spacecraft.

When a satellite or an orbiting space station is exhausted, there are only two ways to take it out of orbit and send it to rest. If the satellite has a very high orbit, such as geosynchronous satellites, then engineers "push" them further into space, into the so-called graveyard orbit. It lies several hundred kilometers above the orbit of the highest operational satellites. Therefore, the probability of a collision of the necessary devices with unnecessary ones is reduced to almost zero.

For satellites that are orbiting lower towards the planet's surface, it is better and more economical to slow down their speed and let them fall back to Earth. If the satellite is small, it will burn up and completely disintegrate in the atmosphere, like hundreds of meteors that fall on the planet every day. But if the satellite is large, and there is a chance that it may not completely burn up in the air, then the process of its disposal will require a little more attention and planning.

The idea is to send the satellite out into the ocean away from any islands or continents, where the outdated craft won't harm anyone. The chosen location should also be away from shipping lanes. Such a place in the ocean exists, and geographers call it the "oceanic pole of inaccessibility." Here you can find a real cemetery of spaceships.

We will place Point Nemo in the category of Antarctica, since both geographical feature do not belong to any state.

Where is the Spaceship Cemetery located?

4800 kilometers from the eastern coast of New Zealand, and 3600 kilometers from the west coast of Chile in the southern part Pacific Ocean lies Point Nemo, in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bwhich is one of the largest landfills on the planet. The nearest islands are 2688 km. In the north it is Ducie Island, which is part of the Pitcairn Islands, in the south it is the Antarctic island of Meyher (Maher), in the northeast of Motu Nui (Motu Nui) near Easter Island.

If you suddenly find yourself here (which is extremely unlikely), you will see absolutely nothing but the endless water expanses of the Pacific Ocean. To see the cemetery of spaceships, you need to go down to the bottom of the ocean, to a depth of about 4 kilometers. It is here that all the world's space agencies send spent satellites.

Name and features of Point Nemo

Point Nemo was named after the famous Captain Nemo (character of the writer Jules Verne). The name also means "no one" in Latin and is very fitting for such a remote and almost inaccessible place on the planet.

Point Nemo, in addition to its remoteness from the population, is also almost not inhabited by marine life. This is good because we don't want to space debris affected marine life. Point Nemo is located in the center of the so-called South Pacific Ocean, which is a large rotating ocean current. This rotation blocks the flow of nutrients flowing from the coastal strip of the continents. In addition, in this part of the ocean there are quite large depths and a water temperature of about +7 ° C. All this makes Point Nemo and the area around it relatively lifeless, similar to an oceanic desert. In other words, this the best place for dumping satellites and space waste.

How many remains in the spaceship graveyard

From 1971 to 2016, 263 vehicles were buried at Point Nemo. Unmanned cargo trucks are regularly flooded here. vehicles with the ISS (International Space Station). Eventually, the ISS itself will be sunk at this location when its lifespan ends. Presumably it will be 2028 if the service life is not extended.

Utilization of Mir station

The largest burial in the spacecraft cemetery was recorded on March 23, 2001. After 15 years of work, our Mir space station, weighing 143 tons, was flooded in this place. While descending, the station, entering the dense layers of the atmosphere, began to crumble at an altitude of about 100 km. By the time of the collision with water, the mass of the station was no more than 25 tons. Everything else either burned down or was torn off and scattered for tens and hundreds of kilometers around.

If you think that a spaceship graveyard is a flat area with neat burials and a watchman at the entrance, then you are mistaken. Submerged vehicles and their parts can be scattered for many kilometers across the ocean. So, for example, when the Mir station disintegrated in the atmosphere, its fragments scattered 1,500 kilometers long and 100 kilometers wide.

As you understand, Point Nemo allows you to level out significant calculation errors when spacecraft are flooded.

Utilization of the next satellite at point Nemo

Be that as it may, the amount of garbage on the planet is growing, and this is very, very bad. Trite, but true. Even the paradise on the planet - the Maldives - and he has his own huge landfill on the island of Thilafushi.

Where do you think satellites and space stations go? It turns out that the earth has special place where all this space debris is "buried".

The question of how to safely dispose of spacecraft arose before scientists in the late 60s of the last century. It was necessary to find such a zone on the globe, which is as far away from people as possible, so that even if the calculations turn out to be incorrect or something goes wrong and the spacecraft descending to the ground blows away from the calculated point, it does not pose a threat to people. Accordingly, in this zone there should not have been inhabited territories and ships should not have sailed along it.

Such a place was found in the Pacific Ocean. It is located between Australia, South America and Antarctica at 48°52.6'S and 123°23.6'W. Point Nemo - so beautifully and metaphorically, in honor of the character of Jules Verne, the place where the remnants of spaceships find their last shelter is named.

Point Nemo is separated from the nearest island by 2688 kilometers. Antarctica is almost the same distance from it, 100 km more to New Zealand, and up to South America and at all more than 3 thousand kilometers.

Navigation in this area is formally prohibited, however, ships from Chile and New Zealand sometimes sail into the zone. In order not to endanger them, spacecraft owners must notify the authorized services of these countries about the time and approximate place of the fall of the remains of satellites and rockets.

The first spacecraft was dropped at Point Nemo in 1971. For 46 years of such space debris, a whole collection has accumulated there - more than 300 exhibits. Moreover, until 2015 this number was only 161 devices, that is, it was in last years the spaceship graveyard began to be really actively used.

The record holder for the amount of buried space debris is Russia. Under the thickness ocean waves the remains of 145 Russian Progresses, six Salyuts and the Mir space station have found peace. In comparison, the Japanese representation here is limited to four HTV space trucks.

Skylab was sunk on July 11, 1979. Credit: NASA

It would seem that the cemetery of spaceships could be a wonderful place for diving. Many travelers would sell their souls for the opportunity to visit such an exotic attraction. However, you will not find a single photograph of a spacecraft cemetery on the Internet, and if there were, it would hardly impress anyone. The fact is that point Nemo is a conditional coordinate, but in fact, the remains of spacecraft are scattered over an area covering an area of ​​more than 17 million square kilometers.

Even if you are lucky enough to stumble upon one of the bodies buried here, you are unlikely to be able to make out anything even remotely resembling a spacecraft in the fragments that have reached the Earth. The fact is that most of devices do not have thermal protection and almost completely burn out when entering the atmosphere. Thus, only refractory structural elements reach the ocean.

Only the largest specimens have a chance to reach the Earth in its original form. The most significant of the inhabitants of the "cemetery" is the 143-ton Mir station, which served faithfully for 15 years and was retired in 2001. When it hit the dense layers of the atmosphere, the station fell apart into six main fragments, which scattered into different sides and ended up hundreds of miles apart.

Mir was sunk on March 23, 2001 Photo: NASA

The spacecraft cemetery, as already mentioned, has been used ten times more actively in recent years than before. This is due to the ever-increasing number of artificial Earth satellites. Their number on this moment is already about 4 thousand, and if you do not remove them from the Earth's orbit, then it is likely that they will begin to collide with each other. And this is already a huge threat, similar to the one depicted in the movie "Gravity", where scattered space debris completely destroyed several space stations.

In this part of the Pacific, there is not a single island for many miles around, and people never come here. Airliners do not fly here, it is forbidden to sail ships, and only the inhabitants sea ​​depths are mute witnesses of former greatness. This is a spaceship graveyard, or Point Nemo.

Space and Scientific research, the operation of navigational instruments, communication and weather forecasting is carried out due to the constant presence of aircraft in earth orbit. These are space stations and artificial satellites of the Earth, which belong to the leading space powers of the planet. But everything technical means have a limited lifetime, after which they become space debris.

And here the question arises about the disposal of waste equipment. In order to get rid of all the space debris that rotates in orbit, a colossal amount of money would have to be spent. Moreover, from a technical point of view, this is not always feasible. But large objects, such as decommissioned space stations, have to be removed from orbit in an organized manner. Firstly, they pose a threat to other spacecraft, and secondly, they can fall to Earth if they deorbit.

Most of the meteorites that reach our planet burn up in the dense layers of the atmosphere. Due to the high speed and aerodynamic drag, which arise upon contact with the atmosphere, everything that approaches the Earth is heated and ignited. This also applies to technical devices that have served their time. But if small and light in terms of construction satellites burn out in dense layers of the atmosphere without a trace, then large objects with refractory elements do not burn out completely and reach the Earth.

Just for such equipment, it was decided to create a spacecraft cemetery - a special place where the remnants of space debris would land. It is used by all space powers that de-orbit their aircraft. This place is located in the South Pacific Ocean, and the nearest land area - Duci Atoll - is almost 2,700 kilometers away. About the same distance is Easter Island, which is located east of the spaceship graveyard. Interestingly, the nearest inhabited place is the International Space Station, which is located at an altitude of "only" 400 km.

Of course, there is not a single station or satellite here that would have sunk unchanged, these are always badly burned remains of structures. The Russian Mir station, which was sunk in 2001, found its last home here, more than 140 Progress cargo ships, as well as cargo ships belonging to Japan and the European Space Agency. In total, here, at a depth of about 4 kilometers, lie the remains of more than 260 spacecraft that were to be disposed of. It is also planned to flood the current International Space Station, the life of which will come to an end in 2028.

It is noteworthy that during the deorbiting of the retired Mir station, residents of Australia, Japan and the Fiji Islands were advised to stay in shelters. And such foresight is not at all accidental: in the entire history of the functioning of this space waste landfill, there were two cases when the deorbiting of aircraft took place in an emergency mode. In 1979, the remains of the American space station Skylab landed in Australia, and in 1991, some parts of the Soviet Salyut-7 crashed in Argentina.

According to experts, the place for the spacecraft cemetery is the most optimal in terms of impact on the ocean ecology. At this point, the currents of the South Pacific Ocean converge, forming a whirlpool in the water column and one of the debris patches on the surface. For this reason, there are few aquatic inhabitants, and chemical pollution has a compact distribution.

When orbital stations, satellites and other spacecraft are expiring, there are two scenarios. If the object was located in a high orbit (these may be geostationary satellites that are stationary relative to the Earth), it is easier to send it to a “graveyard orbit”. It is located in a zone in which the probability of a collision of obsolete objects with other devices is minimal - 200 kilometers above the geostationary orbit. But spaceships operating close to the Earth are more expedient to be burned in the atmosphere or, if they are massive, to be flooded at Point Nemo.

Actually, Point Nemo is the graveyard of spaceships, the most distant place on the planet from land. It is located 2688 kilometers from the islands of Dusi, Motu Nui and Maer. Moreover, the nearest island where people live, Pitcairn, is even further away - 470 kilometers from Ducie Island. As you understand, such a place was chosen for the "burial" of spacecraft for a simple reason - to avoid human casualties and any destruction. The presence of ships in this zone is also prohibited.

Another reason why Point Nemo can be considered an ideal place to "burial" spacecraft is that it is located in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where there is practically no living creatures. Due to the annular current, almost all the garbage from the nearby waters is collected here.

For almost 47 years (since 1971), 263 space object. Basically, these are unmanned trucks from the International Space Station. Moreover, the ISS itself, most likely, will also be “buried” in this zone. Let me remind you that in 2014 NASA extended its service life until 2024.

international space station

The largest object at Point Nemo was flooded in 2001, this is the Russian Mir station. Despite the fact that many parts fell off it immediately after the fall began, the structure did not completely burn out in the atmosphere. According to calculations, 20-25 tons of debris flew from the 135-ton station to the water. Moreover, at an altitude of 90 kilometers, the station split into several parts, so the fall radius was quite large. This is to the fact that it was not in vain that such a large territory was chosen for the flooding of spaceships.

Orbital station "Mir"

But even so, the “burials” did not always go smoothly. For example, in 1979, the wreckage of the American Skylab station fell in Australia, and in 1991, the wreckage Soviet station"Salyut-7" - in Argentina. Luckily there were no casualties.

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Spaceship Graveyard October 29th, 2017

The farthest point on Earth from land has many names, but most often it is called Point Nemo, or the oceanic pole of inaccessibility. It is located at 48°52.6 south latitude and 123°23.6 west longitude. The nearest island of land is located about 2250 kilometers from here. Due to its remoteness, this place is ideal for the disposal of spacecraft, and therefore space agencies often refer to it as the "spacecraft graveyard".

This place is located in the Pacific Ocean and is the most distant point on our planet from any human civilization.

The wreckage of the station "Mir"

However, Bill Aylor, an aerospace engineer and re-entry specialist, has a different definition for this place:

"This is the best place on the planet to drop something from space without causing third-party damage."

To "bury" the next spacecraft in this cemetery, space agencies need some time to make the necessary calculations. As a rule, more compact satellites do not end their lives exactly at point Nemo, because, explains NASA, “the heat created by atmospheric friction, in more destroys a satellite falling at a speed of several thousand kilometers per hour before it falls. TA-dah! It's like magic. As if there was no satellite!

Larger objects like Tiangong-1, China's first orbital space station, launched in September 2011 and weighing around 8.5 tons, are quite another matter. China lost control of the 12-meter orbital laboratory in March 2016. Forecasts are disappointing. The station should fall to Earth sometime in early 2018. Where exactly? So far no one knows. The same Aylor, who works for the non-profit Aerospace Corporation, says his company is likely to hesitate to make predictions more than five days before the station is expected to collapse in Earth's atmosphere. When that happens, hundreds of kilograms of various metal parts like the station's titanium skin, fuel tanks, and more will continue to fall at over 300 kilometers per hour until they eventually hit the planet's surface.

Since China has lost control of the Tiangong-1 station, the country cannot confidently predict whether it will fall into Point Nemo.

Junkyard of spaceships

Interestingly, astronauts living aboard the International Space Station are, in fact, closest to this very point Nemo. The thing is that the ISS is circling over the Earth (and in particular over the place we are talking about) at an altitude of about 400 kilometers, while the piece of land closest to Point Nemo is much further away.

From 1971 to mid-2016, space agencies from around the world buried at least 260 spacecraft here, according to Popular Science. At the same time, as the Gizmodo portal notes, the number of disposed spacecraft has increased dramatically since 2015, when they total number was only 161 at that time.

Here, at a depth of more than three kilometers, the Soviet space station Mir, more than 140 Russian cargo spacecraft, several trucks of the European Space Agency (for example, the first automatic cargo Ship"Jules Verne" ATV series) and even one of the SpaceX rockets, according to Smithsonian.com reports. True, the spacecraft here can hardly be called neatly stacked in one heap. Aylor notes that such large objects, like the Tangun-1 station, can fall apart when falling, covering an area of ​​​​1600 kilometers along and several tens across. The very same territory of "alienation" of Nemo's point covers an area of ​​​​more than 17 million square kilometers, so finding a specific fallen spacecraft here is not so easy as it might seem at first glance.

The European Space Agency's Jules Verne cargo ship breaks apart on re-entry. September 29, 2008

Of course, not all spacecraft end their lives in this cemetery. space technology, but the chances of a piece of a collapsing spacecraft falling on a human being, no matter where that spacecraft hits Earth, are very small, notes Aylor.

“Of course, nothing is impossible. However, since the start space age last case, which comes to mind, happened already in 1997. Then in Oklahoma, an unburned part of a rocket fell on a woman, ” Aylor explains.

The same unburned piece of rocket and the woman it fell on

A dead spacecraft can create a much greater danger in orbit.

The real threat of space debris

At the moment on various heights Around 4,000 artificial satellites circle the Earth. And there should be more in the near future. In other words, orbit is still full of various spacecraft, and soon there will be no crowding at all.

According to statistics from Space-Track.org, in addition to satellites, there are thousands of uncontrolled rocket remains in orbit, as well as more than 12,000 other man-made objects larger than a human fist. And this is if you omit countless different screws, bolts, pieces of dried paint (from rocket skins) and many metal particles.

“Over time, countries began to realize that in literally litter space and this poses a serious threat not only to their systems, but to everyone in general" Ailor adds.

The worst, according to experts from the same European Space Agency, can happen when two pieces of space debris collide with each other, especially when these objects are large.

Random collisions of the same satellites, although very rare, do occur. The last such incidents were in 1996, 2009 and two in 2013. As a result similar events, as well as as a result of the deliberate destruction of satellites, a huge amount of space debris appears, posing a threat to other working satellites and the danger of a chain effect.

"We have found that this debris can remain in orbit for hundreds of years," Aylor comments.

To prevent the emergence of new space debris, aging spacecraft must be deorbited over time. Many space agencies, as well as private space companies, are now considering building a dedicated scavenger spacecraft that could capture obsolete satellites and other spacecraft and send them straight to an underwater spacecraft graveyard on Earth.

However, the same Ailor, like some other experts, insists on the development of new technologies and methods with which it will be possible to capture, drag and remove old uncontrolled space debris that has accumulated in orbit and poses a real threat.

“I proposed something like XPRIZE and the Grand Challenge, where we could select the concepts of the three most suitable spacecraft and give grants for their development and subsequent use in cleaning planet orbits», Ailor says.

Unfortunately, technical difficulties in the implementation of such plans are far from being in the first place among the problems when there is such a thing as bureaucracy.

“Technical difficulties are far from the main thing here. The main problem here is the idea private property. For example, no other nation has the right to touch the same American satellites. If something like this happens, it could be calculated as an act of military aggression.” Aylor explains.

According to Aylor, in the face of a common threat, the nations of the whole world should unite, because this is the only way to effectively solve such problems.