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(CNN) —
3,000 miles off the coast of New Zealand and 2,000 miles north of Antarctica, Point Nemo is so far from Earth that the closest humans are often astronauts aboard the International Space Station. ), which orbits 227 nautical miles above Earth.
It is precisely this remoteness that explains why the ISS, once it retires in 2030, will end its days here, plummeting to Earth to join other decommissioned space stations, satellites and space debris.
This is the world's space graveyard.
Since the 1970s, space-faring nations have dumped their trash in the area around Point Nemo, named after Captain Nemo from Jules Verne's novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."
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Also known as the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility or the Uninhabited Area of the South Pacific Ocean, the exact coordinates of the most remote place in the world were calculated by Canadian-Russian engineer Hrvoje Lukatela in 1992.
More than 263 pieces of space debris have sunk in this area since 1971, including the Russian Mir space station and NASA's first Skylab space station, according to a 2019 study. They are not intact monuments to space travel history, but it is probably fragmented debris spread over a large area.
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"This is the largest ocean area without islands. It's simply the safest area where the long debris fall zone fits in after a re-entry," said Holger Krag, Head of the Space Safety Program Office at the European Space Agency. .
Point Nemo is beyond the jurisdiction of any state and is devoid of human life, although it is not without traces of human impact.
In addition to space debris on the seafloor, microplastic particles were discovered in the waters when Volvo Ocean Race yachts passed through the region in 2018.
Better practices
Space debris, like old satellites, re-enters Earth's atmosphere daily, though most of it goes unnoticed because it burns up long before it hits the ground.
Only the largest space debris, such as spacecraft and rocket parts, poses very little risk to humans and infrastructure on the ground.
Space agencies and operators must plan well in advance to make sure it falls to Earth in this distant ocean.
In the case of the International Space Station, NASA said the ISS will begin maneuvers to prepare for deorbiting as early as 2026, lowering the space lab's altitude, and is expected to crash into Earth in 2031. The exact maneuvers depend on the activity of the solar cycle and its effect on the Earth's atmosphere.
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"Higher solar activity tends to expand Earth's atmosphere and increase drag at the speed of the ISS, resulting in greater loss of drag and natural altitude," NASA said in a recently released paper describing the plans to dismantle the ISS.
Space agencies and commercial operators must also notify authorities that control flight and shipping, usually in Chile, New Zealand and Tahiti, about the location, timing and dimensions of debris drop zones.
About two daily flights pass through the airspace, Krag said.
These authorities produce standardized messages sent to air and sea traffic.
A bigger problem than the spacecraft ending up at Point Nemo, Krag said, is chunks of metal rockets and spacecraft making what's known as an "uncontrolled re-entry" into Earth's atmosphere.
In June 2021, NASA criticized China for failing to "meet responsible standards" after debris from its runaway Long March 5B rocket sank into the Indian Ocean.
Space debris is a big problem.
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“Space-active nations must minimize the risks to people and property on Earth from space object re-entries and maximize transparency regarding those operations,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at the time. .
The rocket, which was about 33 meters tall and weighed nearly 18,000 kilograms, had launched a part of a new Chinese space station into orbit on April 29.
After the fuel ran out, the rocket was allowed to hurtle uncontrollably through space until Earth's gravity pulled it back to the ground.
Krag said that, on average, between 100 and 200 tons of space debris re-enters Earth's atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner each year, but most space experts consider re-entry the most desirable outcome for space debris. .
The vast majority remain above us where they can collide with working satellites, create more debris, and threaten human life on manned spacecraft.
There are at least 26,000 pieces of space debris in orbit around Earth that are the size of a baseball or larger and could destroy a satellite on impact;
more than 500,000 the size of a marble large enough to cause damage to spacecraft or satellites;
and more than 100 million pieces of debris the size of a grain of salt that could puncture a spacesuit, according to a NASA report issued last year.
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Ocean trash can?
Landing space debris in the ocean depths of Point Nemo is the least damaging option, said Vito De Lucia, professor of law at the Norwegian Center for the Law of the Sea at the Arctic University of Norway.
However, we don't know much about the deep-sea environment in this area.
Some research suggests that due to ocean currents in that region, known as the South Pacific Gyre, it is not particularly biologically diverse.
Oceanographer Autun Purser, a postdoctoral researcher at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, said he had been close to the area and said the seafloor was likely inhabited by sea cucumbers, seafloor octopuses and "rare fish."
"In general, there is a low food regime, as it is in the middle of the Pacific Gyre, a low productivity area with little upwelling of nutrient-rich waters, so while there will be bottom-dwelling animals, there probably won't be a great biomass down there," he said via email.
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The European Space Agency's Krag said space objects landing in the ocean were usually made of stainless steel, titanium or aluminum and were non-toxic.
"It's no more than a few dozen metric tons per year. The re-entering fragments don't float, they sink and therefore don't pose a hazard to ship traffic. Compared to the many lost containers and sunken ships, the amount of space hardware is small."
He noted that some rocket fuels are toxic but burn during re-entry.
Krag said the European Space Agency is working on what it called "design for disappearance" technology that would replace aluminum, titanium and steel with materials that would melt during re-entry.
International Space Station