Where is the spaceship graveyard? Spaceship graveyard: where all space debris falls from orbit

In this part of the Pacific Ocean there is not a single island for miles around, and people never come here. Airliners do not fly here, sea vessels are prohibited from sailing here, and only the inhabitants depths of the sea are silent witnesses to past greatness. This is a cemetery spaceships, or point Nemo.

Space and scientific research, the operation of navigation instruments, communications and weather forecasting is carried out due to the constant presence aircraft in low-Earth orbit. These are space stations and artificial satellites of the Earth, which belong to the leading space powers of the planet. But all technical means have a limited service life, after which they become space debris.

And here the question arises about recycling used equipment. In order to get rid of all the space debris that rotates in orbit, one would have to spend a colossal amount of money. Moreover, from a technical point of view this is not always feasible. But large objects, such as spent space stations, have to be removed from orbit in an organized manner. Firstly, they pose a threat to other spacecraft, and secondly, they can fall to Earth if they leave orbit.

Most of the meteorites that reach our planet burn up in dense layers of the atmosphere. Because of high speed and aerodynamic resistance that arise upon contact with the atmosphere, heating and combustion of everything that approaches the Earth occurs. This also applies technical devices who has served his term. But if small and structurally lightweight satellites burn up in dense layers of the atmosphere without a residue, then large objects with refractory elements do not burn up completely and reach the Earth.

It was precisely for such equipment that it was decided to create a spaceship cemetery - a special place where the remains of space debris would land. It is used by all space powers that deorbit their aircraft. This place is located in the South Pacific Ocean, and the nearest landmass - Dusi Atoll - is almost 2,700 kilometers away. Easter Island, which is located east of the spaceship graveyard, is approximately the same distance. Interestingly, the nearest inhabited place is the International space station, which is located at an altitude of “only” 400 km.

Of course, there is not a single station or satellite here that sank unchanged; these are always heavily charred remains of structures. Here they found their last refuge Russian station Mir, sunk in 2001, more than 140 Progress cargo ships, as well as cargo ships owned by Japan and the European Space Agency. In total, here, at a depth of about 4 kilometers, lie the remains of more than 260 spacecraft that were subject to disposal. They also plan to scuttle the current International Space Station, whose operational life will come to an end in 2028.

It is noteworthy that during the deorbit of the spent Mir station, residents of Australia, Japan and the Fiji Islands were advised to stay in shelters. And such foresight is not at all accidental: in the entire history of the operation of this space waste site, there have been two cases when the deorbiting of aircraft took place in emergency mode. In 1979, the remains of the American space station Skylab landed in Australia, and in 1991, some parts of the Soviet Salyut 7 fell in Argentina.

According to experts, the location for the spaceship cemetery was chosen most optimally from the point of view of the impact on the ocean ecology. The currents of the South Pacific Ocean converge at this point, forming a whirlpool in the water column and one of the garbage patches on the surface. For this reason, there are few aquatic inhabitants here, and chemical pollution is compactly distributed.

Where do you think the old satellites and space stations go? It turns out that on Earth there is special place, 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 is carried away from design point, he posed no 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 of spaceships find their final refuge is named after the character of Jules Verne.

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 and more than 3 thousand kilometers.

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, spacecraft owners 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 recent years The spaceship cemetery 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.

Skylab sank on July 11, 1979 Photo: NASA

It would seem that a spaceship graveyard could become wonderful place for diving. 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 of the inhabitants 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 into different sides and ended up hundreds of kilometers apart.

"Mir" sank on March 23, 2001 Photo: NASA

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 at the 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.

East of the coast of New Zealand, several thousand kilometers inland in the Pacific Ocean lies one of the most incredible landfills in the world. Hidden from the eyes of people, the trash can is surrounded only by the turbulent currents of the ocean, and there is not a single island nearby. At the bottom, at a depth of 4 km, lurks a whole field of broken fragments of old satellites, long out of commission. This is the “Spaceship Graveyard”, where space agencies from all over the world send last path their decommissioned satellites and aircraft.

When a satellite or orbital station reaches the end of its service life, there are two different ways to develop a scenario for removing spent equipment from its place of operation. If the satellite's orbit is too high, as is the case with geosynchronous spacecraft, engineers send space scrap metal further into the sky into a garbage disposal orbit, where all too massive structures are sent. This orbit is several hundred kilometers from the farthest trajectory of controlled satellites. This distance was chosen in order to reduce to zero the likelihood of a collision between decommissioned spacecraft and still functioning equipment.

For satellites that operate too close to Earth, it is much easier to do the opposite. If the satellite is small enough, it will burn up on its own. earth's atmosphere, as happens with hundreds of meteors every day. But if the station is quite large, and there is a chance that it will not completely burn up in the Earth's atmosphere during the fall, its decommissioning requires careful planning.

The old satellite has to be accompanied all the way to the water, directed to a strictly defined zone in order to avoid a collision with land and especially with human habitats. Space agencies have a responsibility to ensure that outdated technology does not cause accidents or injuries to civilians.

Known as Point Nemo, the spaceship graveyard is the location in the ocean furthest away from any existing landmass. This location got its name in honor of the well-known hero of Jules Verne’s book about Captain Nemo. WITH Latin language this name translates to “no one,” which is perfect for such a remote and isolated place. Point Nemo lies approximately 2,688 km from the three closest islands - Ducie Atoll in the north, Easter Island (or Motu Nui) in the northeast, and Maher Island in the south. Another name for this place is the oceanic pole of inaccessibility. Point Nemo received this status for its maximum distance from all sea routes in the Pacific Ocean. The cruising of sea ships is simply prohibited here.

In addition to the fact that the space dump is located at a decent distance from people, it is also practically safe for sea ​​creatures region. And this is wonderful, because no one would want decommissioned “pieces of iron” to destroy the local ecosystem. How is this possible in the ocean? It's simple - Point Nemo is located in the southern waters of the great Pacific Gyre, which is a large circular sea current. A powerful whirlpool sucks in everything household waste from the nearest coastal waters in the area. For this reason, Point Nemo is practically uninhabited by marine life and has become a kind of ocean desert, which is also called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Naturally, scientists at one time considered this area an ideal place for space exploration and disposal of spent satellites and waste from space expeditions.

From 1971 to 2016, more than 263 official space debris disposal sites have been held at Point Nemo. Most often, unmanned trucks from the International Space Station are sunk here. The ISS itself will ultimately be buried in this landfill when its service life comes to an end. The approximate date is 2028, but there is a possibility of extending the life of this space object.

ISS. Photo: NASA

The most grandiose funeral at Point Nemo took place on March 23, 2001, when, after 15 years of service, the 135-ton Russian space station Mir was immersed in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. During deorbit, Mir entered our atmosphere at a distance of 100 km from Earth. Even in such rarefied air, the station lost some of its fragments at the beginning of its dying journey. For example, the solar panels fell off the World almost immediately. And 90 km from the surface of the ocean, the spacecraft fell apart into several parts, and fragments burning in the atmosphere were visible in the evening sky even from the Fiji Islands. By the time it entered the water, only 20-25 tons of structures remained from the World.

So if you imagined space cemetery You will be disappointed with a platform covered with satellites and orbital stations gracefully rising above the bottom. The remains of these high-tech devices were scattered over hundreds and thousands of kilometers in small parts. When the World broke up into fragments in the atmosphere, it left a trail of debris 1500 km long and 100 km wide.

Even with the best-planned management of space station sinking, it will never be a seamless landing, said Holger Krag, head of the European Space Agency's (ESA) space waste office. The nature of the destruction of such structures requires experts to prepare a fairly large area for the burial of the satellite. The fragments will never fall in the same place.

That's why Point Nemo - best choice. Located 2,688 km from any nearest land, it gives space design engineers a fairly wide safety net. This is very important in case of errors in the calculations of possible trajectories of falling remains.

Mir space station

An automated cargo spacecraft (ARV) named Jules Verne, developed by ESA, disintegrates in the Earth's atmosphere on September 29, 2008 over the uninhabited Pacific Ocean southwest of Tahiti. Photo: NASA.

In the remote region of the Pacific Ocean southeast of New Zealand, depths reach 4,000 meters. The nearest land from here is thousands of kilometers away, there are not even small islands, ships rarely sail here.

In this desert region of the ocean is located the Ocean Pole of Inaccessibility or Point Nemo, named after the hero of the science fiction novel by Jules Verne. The coordinates of the point are 48⁰52′ south latitude and 123⁰23′ west longitude. The nearest land is Dusi Atoll, located 2688 km to the north.

Somewhere here, under the thickness of the ocean waves, they found their last refuge 145 Russian Progress, 4 Japanese HTV space trucks and 5 European Space Agency ATV automated cargo vehicles. “Next to them lie the remains of the Mir space station and 6 Salyuts.”

The word “nearby” is in quotation marks for a reason. None of the spacecraft survived in the form of more or less significant fragments. Contact with the atmosphere is detrimental to spacecraft unless they are equipped with effective temperature protection, as is the case with manned lander modules.

No one ever planned to return space trucks to Earth and orbital stations for reuse. Once in the dense layers of the atmosphere, such space objects collapse and burn.

As one of the leaders of the European Space Agency, Holger Krag, explained in 2013, under such conditions, even in the case of a controlled landing of an obsolete object, its fragments are scattered over a very large area.

The section of ocean where the surviving spaceship wrecks are flooded stretches 3,000 km from north to south and 5,000 km from west to east.

The largest object in the cemetery is the 143-ton Mir station, the remains of which sank to the ocean floor in March 2001 after 15 years of orbital service. According to experts, six main fragments of the Mir and many small fragments with a total weight of 20-25 tons reached the bottom.

“Mir” began to collapse at an altitude of 95 kilometers. Fragments of the station are scattered over a vast area about 3000 km long and about 100 km wide.

Despite the fact that the “graveyard” is located far from busy shipping routes, ships and planes may end up here. Responsibility for navigation in the region lies with the authorities of Chile and New Zealand. Therefore, in the event of planned flooding, the owners of spacecraft warn these countries several days in advance and transmit to them data about the expected time and place of the fall of the debris. Having received notification, authorized services notify aircraft and ships of the danger.

Spaceship Graveyard October 29th, 2017

The farthest 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 to a greater extent destroys a satellite falling at a speed of several thousand kilometers per hour before it even falls. Ta-da! 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.

The European Space Agency's Jules Verne cargo ship breaks apart as it enters the atmosphere. September 29, 2008

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.

The same unburnt piece of a rocket and the woman it fell on

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

The real threat of space debris

Currently on various heights There are about 4,000 artificial satellites circling the Earth. 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, huge number space debris that poses 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 creation 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.