Where do you think the old satellites and space stations go? It turns out that there is a special place on Earth where they “bury” all this space debris.

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 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 drifts away from the calculated point, it does not pose a threat to people. Accordingly, there should have been no inhabited areas in this zone and ships should not have sailed through it.

Such a place was found in Pacific Ocean. It is located between Australia, South America and Antarctica at coordinates 48°52.6′ south latitude and 123°23.6′ west longitude. Point Nemo - this is how beautifully and metaphorically the place where the remains find their final refuge is named after the character of Jules Verne spaceships.

Point Nemo is separated from the nearest island by 2,688 kilometers. Antarctica is located at almost the same distance from it, New Zealand is 100 km more, and South America is even more than 3 thousand kilometers away.

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, owners of spacecraft must notify the authorized services of these countries about the time and approximate location of the fall of the remains of satellites and rockets.

The first spacecraft was dropped at Point Nemo in 1971. Over 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, precisely in last years The spaceship graveyard began to be used really actively.

Russia holds the record for the amount of buried space debris. Under the thickness of the ocean waves, the remains of 145 Russian Progress ships, six Salyuts and the Mir space station found peace. For comparison, the Japanese presence here is limited to four HTV space trucks.

It would seem that the spaceship graveyard would be a wonderful diving site. 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 spaceship cemetery on the Internet, and even if there were any, it would hardly impress anyone. The fact is that Point Nemo is a conventional coordinate; 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 flown to Earth. The fact is that most of the 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 their original form. The most significant inhabitant of the “cemetery” is the 143-ton Mir station, which served faithfully for 15 years and was retired in 2001. When it entered the dense layers of the atmosphere, the station fell apart into six main fragments, which scattered in different directions and ended up hundreds of kilometers apart.

The spaceship cemetery, as already mentioned, has been used tens of times more actively in recent years than before. This is due to the constantly increasing number of artificial Earth satellites. Their number is this moment is already about 4 thousand, and if you do not remove them from Earth’s orbit, then there is a high probability 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 flying space debris completely destroyed several space stations.

The volume of space debris in low-Earth orbit has reached a critical threshold, experts say. It is already becoming dangerous not only for orbiting spacecraft, but for all of us. More than 20 thousand fragments rotate in near-Earth space. NASA started talking about the need to launch a special cleaner into space.

Is it possible to carry out general cleaning in space and how can this be done? The editor-in-chief of the magazine "Cosmonautics News" Igor Marinin spoke about this on the air of "Morning of Russia".

The expert noted that the fall of this space debris is practically not dangerous for the Earth. According to him, the panic, which is associated, in particular, with the fall of the American UARS satellite, was provoked by incompetent people. Contrary to fears, the satellite did not fall on someone’s head, but sank safely in the Pacific Ocean far from land. “The probability that debris will fall on some populated area is negligible - less than one ten-thousandth of a percent,” Marinin noted.

According to the expert, it cannot be said that the problem of space debris has not been dealt with before. This issue has been raised more than once in the UN and international space organizations. “In 1997, an advisory decision was made that every country involved in space activities should clean up after itself. For example, garbage cans were simply thrown away from the Mir station. Now nothing is thrown away from the International Space Station,” he said.

However, collecting the debris that is already in orbit is a big problem. You cannot collect these debris with a magnet - the magnet attracts steel alloys, and the debris is mainly duralumin. Japanese experts suggested catching space debris with a net, but this is also not a suitable option - the debris moves in different directions and at different speeds.

In Russia, this issue is not yet considered relevant at all and no funds are being invested in its solution. However, this garbage does not pose a direct threat to the Earth. “Most space debris slowly but surely falls and burns up in the atmosphere. If international laws and declarations are now adopted so that every country involved in space activities undertakes to deal with this debris, then this problem will not be so pressing. All debris will will self-destruct, and new ones will appear less and less,” Marinin concluded.

Spaceship Graveyard- a common name for the 4 km deep region of the South Pacific Ocean, closed to shipping, where the remains of spacecraft end up after they are decommissioned. It is located near Christmas Island,

3900 km from the New Zealand city of Wellington. Most spacecraft burn up in dense layers of the atmosphere, but part of the ship's skin and other parts that did not burn out when they were taken out of orbit fall into this area. Stations and ships that have exhausted their service life with various types of garbage and waste from space expeditions loaded into their compartments are subject to flooding. As a rule, only refractory structural elements reach the water surface. In particular, this area is used by the Mission Control Center (MCC) to scuttle Progress space trucks. The remains of the Mir space station were sunk in this area in 2001. The history of the “cemetery” also includes two emergency incidents: in 1979, the remains of the American Skylab station fell in western Australia, and in 1991, the debris of the Russian Salyut-7 station partially scattered in Argentina. Both incidents resulted in no casualties or destruction. In March 2001, during the deorbit of the Mir complex, the authorities of Australia, Japan and the Fiji Islands, located at a very impressive distance from the “cemetery”, recommended their citizens not to go outside, but to stay only in residential buildings, institutions and other shelters. Every year, several dozen spacecraft find their final refuge in the ocean “cemetery.” According to representatives of the Mission Control Center of the Federal Space Agency, “the accepted practice of destroying space debris using ‘trucks’ does not harm the Earth’s ecology.” The area is completely closed to navigation.

The sinking area for disposable space stations and cargo ships removed from Earth orbit, known as the “spaceship graveyard,” is located in the Pacific Ocean at the 40th parallel of the Southern Hemisphere near Christmas Island, far from shipping lanes and populated areas. At the same time, the history of the “cemetery” also includes two emergency incidents: in 1979, the remains of the American Skylab station fell in western Australia, and in 1991, the debris of the Russian Salyut-7 station partially scattered in Argentina. Both incidents resulted in no casualties or destruction. In March 2001, during the deorbit of the Mir complex, the authorities of Australia, Japan and the Fiji islands, located at a very impressive distance from the “cemetery”, recommended their citizens not to go outside, but to stay exclusively in residential buildings and institutions and other shelters.

Stations and ships that have exhausted their service life with various types of garbage and waste from space expeditions loaded into their compartments are subject to flooding. As a rule, only refractory structural elements reach the surface of the water, which then sink to a depth of about 4 kilometers (most of the fragments burn up in the dense layers of the atmosphere). Every year, several dozen spacecraft find their final refuge in the ocean “graveyard.” According to representatives of the Mission Control Center of the Federal Space Agency, “the accepted practice of destroying space debris using “trucks” does not harm the Earth’s ecology. Source: http://kvazar.org/showthread.php?t=18136 The final orbit of the Mir station. Debris Mir station over the Pacific Ocean Source: http://www.mir.avia.ru/

The final round of the Mir station.

The wreckage of the Mir station over the Pacific Ocean

Source: http://www.mir.avia.ru/

The first European cargo spacecraft, the Jules Verne, was also sunk in the South Pacific Ocean, in the so-called spaceship graveyard in a given area with coordinates 40 degrees S. and 145 degrees W.D. 2500 km east of New Zealand, 6000 km west of Chile and 2500 km south of French Polynesia, September 29, 2008 at approximately 17:53 Moscow time. Part of the ship's structures burned out in the dense layers of the atmosphere during the removal of the spacecraft from orbit. The ship undocked from the ISS on September 6, after which it was sent to a designated area of ​​​​the ocean for flooding. Source: http://www.cybersecurity.ru/space/56091.html Photograph of the fall of the ship "Jules Verne": Image source and information about it: http://www.astronet.ru/db/msg/1231393

The autonomous flight of the Progress M-66 cargo spacecraft is ending; on Monday evening the ship will be deorbited and scuttled in a non-navigable area of ​​the Pacific Ocean, a representative of the Mission Control Center told RIA Novosti. The ship was undocked from the station on May 6 and sent on a controlled autonomous flight for scientific purposes. At 14:28:30 UTS, the Progress engines will receive a command to brake, after which the ship will enter the dense layers of the Earth's atmosphere, where it will burn up. Fragments of the Progress will splash down in the estimated area of ​​the Pacific Ocean at 15:14:45 UTS. The coordinates of the center of the fall group of unburnt structural elements are 42°34" south latitude and 139°24" west longitude. Source: MCC

The Progress M-67, the last space truck with an analog control system, is sunk in the Pacific Ocean. The Interfax agency was informed about this by the Mission Control Center. The wreckage of the ship, which did not burn up in the atmosphere, fell far from shipping routes, about three thousand kilometers east of Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. On September 21, the truck undocked from the ISS and set off on an autonomous flight, during which it took part in the Plasma-Progress experiment. As part of this experiment, the characteristics of plasma clouds that arise around a spacecraft when its engines operate in low Earth orbit were studied. At the ISS, the expensive Kurs docking equipment was removed from the Progress. The garbage and equipment that had accumulated at the station was loaded on board the ship. Instead of the analog "Progress" of the old series, trucks with a digital control system will be used - more reliable and spacious. Two such ships have already been sent into orbit. The first of them delivered cargo to the ISS in November last year.

Like any other machine, space satellites and stations do not last forever - whether their job is to collect climate data, provide communications or conduct scientific research operations, they eventually become obsolete and break down, just like ordinary vacuum cleaners or washing machines. When this happens, they fall to the ground, but where is the graveyard of dead spaceships?

The fall of such devices is controlled by man, and most of the “dying” satellites end up, oddly enough, in one place in the world, which bears the mysterious name Point Nemo. According to NASA representatives, this mass burial site for obsolete spacecraft is located closest to New Zealand and Argentina, but in reality it is the most remote point in the world from any populated area. And, of course, Point Nemo is just a section of the world’s oceans, or rather the Pacific. Also called the "Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility" and the "Uninhabited Region of the Pacific", this graveyard of dead satellites is located approximately 4000 km from the nearest land. Its exact coordinates are also known - 48 degrees 52.6 minutes south latitude and 123 degrees 23.6 minutes west longitude.

This great depths(approximately 3 km), which are mainly inhabited by sponges, whales, perches and octopuses. Probably, these dark sea waters envelop the spaceships that have fallen in them with the same blue shroud as the space of outer space.

And as mentioned above, spacecraft falling into Point Nemo are closely watched. In order for the satellite to “retire” where needed, space agencies must manage this process, removing the “dying” device from orbit in a timely manner. Small satellites, of course, do not reach the earth, being destroyed in the atmosphere. But larger ones and initially located in low orbits do not burn up completely, and their remains end up at Point Nemo.

According to official data, between 1971 and mid-2016, global space agencies sent something like 260 spacecraft to the “uninhabited region of the Pacific Ocean.” These included 4 Japanese HTV cargo ships, 5 ESA robotic cargo ships, 140 Russian transport ships and satellites, including the Mir station (in 2001), several European Space Agency cargo ships, and even one SpaceX rocket .

Sometimes, however, failures occur. In particular, the 8.5-ton Chinese space station Tiangong-1, launched in 2011, left the control of the Chinese agency in March 2016, and is now lost somewhere in the depths of space. It is assumed that at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018 it will clearly decide to fall to the ground, starting to decline at a speed of 290 km/h. And she is unlikely to hit Point Nemo. But, according to experts, there is no need to be afraid of such a giant falling in the middle of our field or city.

“Most parts of space stations and satellites burn up during the fall. For example, from the huge 143-ton Mir station, after passing through all layers of the atmosphere, only 20 tons remained,” they reassure.

And, it seems, their words are indeed true, because during the entire space race of mankind there has been only one case recorded when a person was injured, and even then extremely slightly, from the fall of a part of a device arriving from space. This person was a woman from Oklahoma, walking along a dirt path in the middle of the endless corn fields of the American state. In fact, a small falling piece of the satellite barely grazed her shoulder, mostly scaring her rather than physically harming her.

However, Point Nemo is not the only resting place for dead spaceships. In fact, there are two such places, and the second is located far in space. Back in 1993, all the world's space agencies agreed on general rules disposal of dead vehicles either in the “watery grave” of the Pacific Ocean, or in the so-called “cemetery orbit”, located far from Earth. It is located approximately 36,000 km above the earth and 322 km from the nearest operating satellites and stations. And this method of recycling obsolete devices is preferred to be used much more often.

In the desert region of the Pacific Ocean there is a so-called spaceship cemetery (48°52" S and 123°23" W) - Point Nemo, named after the well-known literary hero adventure-fantasy work by Jules Verne (another name is the Pole of Inaccessibility). The nearest land is the small Dusi Atoll, located 2688 km north of Point Nemo. It was here, under the thickness of the ocean waves, that 145 Progress ships of the Russian Federation, 4 HTV space trucks of Japan and 5 ATV cargo automatic spaceships belonging to the European Space Agency found their last refuge. The spaceship cemetery also contains the remains of 6 Salyuts and the Mir space station.

No reuse

Naturally, not a single space station (or is buried in the Pacific Ocean intact; they were all absorbed by the water column in the form of separate significant fragments. For most spacecraft, contact with the atmosphere is extremely destructive; they are not equipped with special effective thermal protection, unlike manned landing modules. The cemetery of spaceships in the Pacific Ocean has accepted into its bosom those space trucks that initially no one planned to return to Earth for reuse. Such spacecraft, once in the lower dense layers of the Earth's atmosphere, are destroyed and burned. But individual fragments reach earth's surface, therefore, the designation of the burial area for decommissioned ships and near-Earth orbit ("spacecraft cemetery") is justified and appropriate.

Emergencies

The history of Point Nemo has two emergencies. In 1979, the debris of the American space station Skylab, not reaching the conventional square of water area, fell on the western part of the Australian mainland. And in 1991, the remains of the Russian orbital station Salyut 7 partially fell on Argentina. Fortunately, both unforeseen incidents occurred without significant destruction or loss of life. A spaceship graveyard is a dangerous neighborhood. That is why, in the early spring of 2001, during the decommissioning of the Mir orbital complex, the authorities of Japan and Australia strongly recommended that their citizens refrain from walking and take shelter indoors.

Disposal of space debris

Every year, the graveyard of spaceships in the Pacific Ocean is replenished with several dozen. According to experts, the practice of disposing of space debris using cargo ships, accepted by the international community, does not cause significant harm to the ecology of the planet. Stations and ships that have exhausted their service life are subject to flooding; their compartments are loaded with waste from space expedition participants and other debris. Typically, the surface of the Pacific Ocean is reached by individual refractory elements of the ship (most of them burn out without a trace in the dense layers of the atmosphere), which, after diving, descend to a depth of more than 4 kilometers.

"Graveyard" UFO

After receiving the next images sent by the Curiousity rover from the Red Planet, most amateur ufologists became interested in the clearly visible strange craters on the surface of Mars. After careful research, they put forward a number of hypotheses regarding their origin. One of the versions assures the public that these craters are traces of the landing of alien spacecraft - the UFO Sightings Daily blog reports this. According to one of the participants in the analysis, similar craters were previously discovered on the Moon. At the same time, it was also not possible to find a logical explanation for the anomalies on our natural satellite. According to the unanimous opinion of ufologists, the discovered relief forms are of artificial origin and represent either a kind of cosmodrome or a cemetery for spaceships. Photos submitted for public review are still published on the UFO blog. According to another version, the discovered recesses are nothing more than repair shops in which UFOs underwent maintenance. But the hypothesis that the Curiousity rover photographed a spaceship graveyard on Mars has gained great popularity.

Asteroid Vesta

Located between Jupiter and Mars, discovered heavenly body with a diameter exceeding 550 km. This asteroid, named Vesta by scientists, according to one popular hypothesis, is the remnant of a collapsed planet that was once inhabited by intelligent beings. About a year ago, the automatic probe “Dawn” (USA) came quite close to it, and NASA’s collection was replenished with detailed and expressive photographs of its surface. Ufologists, having examined the photographs, discovered quite interesting strange objects on the surface of Vesta. The photographs allegedly show a dilapidated disc-shaped UFO, partially hidden under a layer of soil, the likeness of an airplane and other strange structures. Scientists have no reason to assume that these objects are of terrestrial origin. Most likely, these are traces of the existing Phaeton civilization or another UFO cemetery. The fact is that experts discovered flying structures that were very different from each other, which allowed them to assume that the ships belonged to different alien civilizations. So not only was a spaceship cemetery discovered on Mars, but also on distant Vesta.

The lot of science fiction writers

However, it is unlikely that in the near future humanity will be able to learn more details about the discovered artifacts. So far no one intends to send a manned expedition to Vesta and Mars. All hypotheses remain the province of science fiction writers.

In the Spaceship Graveyard

The most distant point on Earth from land has many names, but it is most often called Point Nemo, or the oceanic pole of inaccessibility. It is located at coordinates 48°52.6 south latitude and 123°23.6 west longitude. The nearest land island is approximately 2,250 kilometers away. Due to its remote location, this place is ideal for the burial of spacecraft, and therefore space agencies often call it a “spacecraft graveyard.”

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

Wreckage of the Mir station

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

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

In order to “bury” another spacecraft in this cemetery, space agencies need some time to carry out the necessary calculations. As a rule, smaller satellites do not end their lives at the Nemo point because, NASA explains, “the heat created by atmospheric friction is more likely to destroy a falling satellite at a speed of several thousand kilometers per hour before it even falls. TA-dah! It's like magic. It’s as if there was no satellite!”

It's a different matter for larger objects like Tiangong-1, China's first orbital space station, launched in September 2011, which weighs about 8.5 tons. China lost control of the 12-meter orbiting laboratory in March 2016. The forecasts are disappointing. The station should fall to Earth sometime in early 2018. Where exactly? No one knows yet. The same Aylor, working for non-profit organization Aerospace Corporation, says his company will likely be hesitant to make predictions until five days before the station is expected to break up in Earth's atmosphere. When this happens, hundreds of kilograms of various metal parts such as the titanium plating of the station, fuel tanks and much more will continue to fall at speeds of over 300 kilometers per hour until they eventually fall to the surface of the planet.

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

Spaceship junkyard

Interestingly, astronauts living aboard the International Space Station are actually the closest to this very point of Nemo. The thing is that the ISS circles above the Earth (and in particular above 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.

According to Popular Science, from 1971 to mid-2016, space agencies from around the world buried at least 260 spacecraft here. At the same time, as the Gizmodo portal notes, the number of scrapped spacecraft has increased sharply 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 European Space Agency trucks (for example, the first automatic cargo ship "Jules Verne" ATV series) and even one of the rockets found their final resting place SpaceX, according to reports from Smithsonian.com. True, the spacecraft here can hardly be called neatly stacked in one pile. Aylor notes that such large objects as the Tangun-1 station can fall apart when falling, covering an area of ​​1,600 kilometers along and several dozen across. The Nemo point “exclusion” territory itself covers an area of ​​more than 17 million square kilometers, so finding a specific fallen spacecraft here is not as easy as it might seem at first glance.

Of course, not all spacecraft end up in this spacecraft graveyard, but the chances that part of a collapsing spacecraft will fall on one of the people, regardless of where this spacecraft falls on Earth, are very small, notes Aylor.

“Of course, nothing is impossible. However, since the beginning of the space age, the last incident that comes to mind occurred back in 1997. Then in Oklahoma a half-burnt part of a rocket fell on a woman,”- explains Ailor.

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

The real threat of space debris

At the moment, about 4,000 artificial satellites are circling the Earth at various altitudes. And there should be even more in the near future. In other words, there are still a lot of different spacecraft in orbit, but soon there will be no crowd 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 artificial objects larger than a human fist. And this is if we also omit the countless number of different screws, bolts, pieces of dried paint (from the skin of missiles) and many metal particles.

“Over time, countries began to realize that they were literally littering space and this created a serious threat not only to their systems, but to everyone in general.”, adds Aylor.

The worst thing, 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 of such events, as well as as a result of the deliberate destruction of satellites, a huge amount of space debris appears, creating a threat to other working satellites and the danger of a chain effect.

"We found that this debris can remain in orbit for hundreds of years,"- Ailor 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 the possibility of creating a special scavenger spacecraft that could capture obsolete satellites and other spacecraft and send them straight to the underwater spacecraft graveyard on Earth.

However, the same Aylor, like some other experts, insists on developing 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 Grand Challenge, where it would be possible to select the concepts of the three most suitable spacecraft and give grants for their development and subsequent use in cleaning the planet’s orbit,”- says Ailor.

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

“Technical difficulties are far from the most important thing here. The main problem here is the idea of ​​private property. For example, no other nation has the right to touch the same American satellites. If this happened, it could be considered an act of military aggression,”- explains Ailor.

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