Friday, November 23, 2018

Point Nemo - Spacecrafts watery graveyard!

Point Nemo (48°52.6'S 123°23.6'W) is located over 2,688 km (1,670 mi) equidistantly from the coasts of three far-flung islands.

In the pack ice of the Arctic ocean, at the greatest distance from any sushi is the Northern pole of inaccessibility. The distance to the geographic North pole is 661 km, to Cape barrow, Alaska is 1453 km, while the nearest Islands, Elsmere and of Franz-Joseph — 1094 km.

The location of the South pole of inaccessibility is not precisely determined: they must be the point in Antarctica furthest from the coastline of the southern ocean, however, scientists have not come to a consensus about how to understand the word “coast” as applied to this region.

Continental pole of inaccessibility — the place on land, the most remote from the oceans. This is the point in Eurasia, in Northern China (coordinates 46°17' North latitude. 86°40' e). The nearest shorelines — 2645 km.

Finally, the Oceanic pole of inaccessibility is located in the South Pacific at coordinates 48°52' Yu. sh. 123°23' s. D. Researcher Hrvoje of Locatel (Hrvoje Lukatela) figured this point in 1992 with the help of computer simulation. It is also called Point Nemo (Point Nemo) — in honor of the captain
of Verne’s novels. This is the most remote from the sushi place in the ocean. The nearest land, an uninhabited Atoll Ducie, lies 2 km.

It’s so desolate area that there is almost no fauna species: the strongest currents allow to survive the bacteria. Therefore, a space Agency, use this section of the ocean as a dumping ground: it is believed that the damage to people and nature from a distance will be minimal. Point Nemo is buried at least hundreds of decommissioned spacecraft and their parts.

Where spaceships go to die: Nasa's watery graveyard in the South Pacific 1,600 miles from land is now the resting place for 260 sunken craft
By Harry Pettit For Mailonline
Published: 23 October 2017


NASA has a 'spacecraft cemetery' where it buries used satellites by crashing them into a remote region in the Pacific Ocean.

'Point Nemo' (Latin for 'no one'), also known as the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility, is more than 1,600 miles from any spot of land.

The graveyard has amassed the remains of at least 260 crafts - mostly Russian - since it was first used in 1971, and helps to stop Earth from amassing too much dangerous orbiting space junk.

The spot's remoteness helps agencies avoid dangerous crashes.

Smaller satellites will burn up but pieces of the larger ones will survive to reach the Earth's surface. To avoid crashing on a populated area they are brought down near the point of oceanic inaccessibility.

The graveyard sits in South Pacific between Australia, New Zealand and South America.

Due to oceanic currents, the region is not fished because few nutrients are brought to the area, meaning marine life is scarce.

Agencies time their craft to a controlled entry above the region to make sure they land in the remote zone.

The spacecraft 'buried' there, which include a SpaceX rocket, several European Space Agency cargo ships, more than 140 Russian re-supply crafts, and the Soviet-era MIR space station, never reach the site in one piece.

SPACE JUNK

The graveyard helps to avoid the build-up of dangerous orbiting space junk above Earth.

But the growing amount of fast-moving space debris could lead to catastrophic collisions with satellites. There are an estimated 170 million pieces of so-called 'space junk' - left behind after missions that can be as big as spent rocket stages or as small as paint flakes - in orbit alongside some £920 billion ($700 billion) of space infrastructure. But only 22,000 are tracked, and with the fragments able to travel at speeds above 27,000kmh (16,777 mph), even tiny pieces could seriously damage or destroy satellites.

One future visitor to this desolate place will be the International Space Station. Current plans are for it to be decommissioned in the next decade and it will have to be carefully brought down in the oceanic pole of inaccessibility.

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