Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Bola blam here. Since the launch of Sputnik
Speaker 1: one in ninety seven, several thousand human made devices have
Speaker 1: been sent into Earth's orbit. A return trip was never
Speaker 1: in the cards for many of them. Thus, broken satellites,
Speaker 1: abandoned rockets, and assorted bits of mission related garbage are
Speaker 1: now whizzing around our planet at frighteningly high speeds. Some
Speaker 1: objects may be traveling faster than twenty seven thousand kilometers
Speaker 1: per hour that's around seventeen thousand miles per hour, or
Speaker 1: really fast, and the trash begets trash. Collisions can generate
Speaker 1: even more debris, bleeding to even more impacts. This is
Speaker 1: a serious problem for a world that's dependent upon telecommunications
Speaker 1: and GPS signals. More than one active satellite has been
Speaker 1: destroyed by space debris, and many more will doubtless meet
Speaker 1: the same fate. We haven't come up with a perfect
Speaker 1: solution yet, but there are ways to remove some of
Speaker 1: the orbiting bodies that have outlived their usefulness. For almost
Speaker 1: half a century now, space agencies have been instructing old
Speaker 1: satellites and decommissioned vessels to crash land in a remote
Speaker 1: part of the South Pacific. The area is known as
Speaker 1: a spacecraft cemetery. It encompasses a geographic place of interest
Speaker 1: known as Point Nemo Latin word meaning nobody, and it's
Speaker 1: the furthest you can get from dry land without leaving
Speaker 1: Planet Earth. It's about two thousand, five hundred miles or
Speaker 1: four thousand kilometers east of New Zealand, so when a
Speaker 1: doomed spacecraft is sent there, the chances of it hitting
Speaker 1: a person or even a passing boat are pretty dang slim.
Speaker 1: The watery grave site received its first decommissioned spacecraft in nineteen.
Speaker 1: More than two hundred and sixty others have subsequently been
Speaker 1: laid to rest there, with the majority being of Russian origin.
Speaker 1: None can match the prestige, though, of Mirror, the Soviet
Speaker 1: built precursor to the International Space Station or i s S,
Speaker 1: which cruised above Earth from to two one one. Mirror
Speaker 1: received instructions to land in the vicinity of Point Nemo
Speaker 1: in March of two thousand one. The space station broke
Speaker 1: apart in its rocky descent through Earth's atmosphere. Many components
Speaker 1: burned up in the process, and the six main fragments
Speaker 1: that remain are scattered across a wide expanse of sea floor.
Speaker 1: Similar things happened to the European Jewels Verne spacecraft, the
Speaker 1: Russian Progress cargo ship, and countless other denizens of the
Speaker 1: deep sea burial ground. Come one, NASA plans to plunge
Speaker 1: to the I S S into the waters of Point
Speaker 1: Nemo after more than thirty years of service. NASA expects
Speaker 1: to be able to operate the I S S safely
Speaker 1: through the year. Of course, getting a spacecraft to land
Speaker 1: anywhere takes a lot of skill and precise calculations. Space
Speaker 1: agencies must remain in contact with their vessels in order
Speaker 1: to send up guidance instructions. Once that degree of control
Speaker 1: is lost, a craft is liable to wind up anywhere.
Speaker 1: If you've lived through the Space Race, you might remember
Speaker 1: how NASA's sky Lab unexpectedly crash landed in Western Australia
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine. By the same token, nobody knew
Speaker 1: where the Chinese Tiangong one orbital lab would come to
Speaker 1: rest after it stopped working properly in March of six.
Speaker 1: In what the press called a near amazing coincidence, the
Speaker 1: eight and a half ton Lab crash landed on April
Speaker 1: one in South Pacific waters, just narrowly missing Point Nemo
Speaker 1: as it fell. Today's episode is based on the article
Speaker 1: Point Nemo where Spacecraft Go to Dive on houstuffworks dot Com,
Speaker 1: written by Mark Mancini. Brain stuff is production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks. Dot Com is
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clang and Ramsay Young. Four more podcasts
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