Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lauren Bola blam here. Since the launch of Sputnik one in ninety seven, several thousand human made devices have been sent into Earth's orbit. A return trip was never in the cards for many of them. Thus, 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 twenty seven thousand kilometers per hour that's around seventeen thousand miles per hour, or really fast, and the trash begets trash. Collisions can generate even more debris, bleeding to even more impacts. This is a serious problem for a world that's dependent upon 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 have 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 is known as
a spacecraft cemetery. It encompasses a geographic place of interest known as Point Nemo Latin word meaning nobody, and it's the furthest you can get from dry land without leaving Planet Earth. It's about two thousand, five hundred miles or four thousand kilometers east of New Zealand, so when a doomed spacecraft is sent there, the chances of it hitting a person or even a passing boat are pretty dang slim. The watery grave site received its first decommissioned spacecraft in nineteen.
More than two hundred and sixty others have subsequently been laid to rest there, with the majority being of Russian origin. None can match the prestige, though, of Mirror, the Soviet built precursor to the International Space Station or i s S, which cruised above Earth from to two one one. Mirror received instructions to land in the vicinity of Point Nemo in March of two thousand one. 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. Similar things happened to the European Jewels Verne spacecraft, the Russian Progress cargo ship, and countless other denizens of the deep sea burial ground. Come one, NASA plans to plunge to the I S S into the waters of Point
Nemo after more than thirty years of service. NASA expects to be able to operate the I S S safely through the year. Of course, 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've lived through the Space Race, you might remember how NASA's sky Lab unexpectedly crash landed in Western Australia in nineteen seventy nine. By the same token, nobody knew where the Chinese Tiangong one orbital lab would come to rest after it stopped working properly in March of six. In what the press called a near amazing coincidence, the eight and a half ton Lab crash landed on April one in South Pacific waters, just narrowly missing Point Nemo
as it fell. Today's episode is based on the article Point Nemo where Spacecraft Go to Dive on houstuffworks dot Com, written by Mark Mancini. Brain stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks. Dot Com is produced by Tyler Clang and Ramsay Young. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows