This Is Where We’re Gonna Bury The ISS

In the middle of the South Pacific, as far from land as you can you possibly get, lies a graveyard.

Not a graveyard for people. Or pets. Instead, the bodies resting  here belong to hundreds of broken up spacecraft and satellites.

When the International Space  Station gets decommissioned, it too will call this place home.

But you might be wondering, “Is dumping all our space junk into one  spot in the ocean really a good idea?’ And if so, you wouldn’t be alone.

Some researchers and environmentalists are worried that all this debris might  be taking a toll on the environment.

But the alternative could be even worse.

[INTRO]

The official name for this spacecraft cemetery  is the South Pacific Ocean Uninhabited Area.

If you wanted to get there, I don’t know why you did, but if you do, you’d have to sail some 2, 700 kilometers  from the nearest spot of land… either the Ducie Island atoll to the north, the islet Motu Nui to the northeast, or Maher Island to the south.

At the middle of this graveyard is Point Nemo, which means ‘no one’ in Latin, because it’s literally the most  isolated place in the world.

All you bookworms out there  may have already picked up on the Jules Verne link here.

But for those who haven’t, the  name is also a nod to the character in the 1870’s classic Twenty  Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, Captain Nemo.

But it’s not just people and land that are notably absent from the area.

There might not be very many fish or  other sea creatures there, either.

That’s because Point Nemo lies  within the South Pacific Gyre… a kind of ocean desert where the  swirling ocean currents around it pull away most nutrients.