We are raining spacecraft into the ocean

We built an elaborate body of law for what falls into the ocean. Then we started raining spacecraft into it.

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Somewhere in the South Pacific, at 48°52.6′ south, 123°23.6′ west, a point on the ocean’s surface lies farther from dry land than any other point on Earth. Sailors call it Point Nemo, after Jules Verne’s fictional captain, a man who went to sea specifically to escape the reach of law. The name fits for a second reason nobody planned.

Since 1971, nearly 300 dead spacecraft have come down in the waters around it. Russian engineers have nicknamed it the Spacecraft Cemetery. Mir is down there. So are dozens of Progress cargo haulers (uncrewed Russian spacecraft used to deliver food, fuel, water, and supplies to space stations), European and Japanese resupply vehicles, and debris from a half-century of orbital housekeeping. If the plan holds, the International Space Station will join them in 2031: adding the remnants of the four-hundred-ton, quarter-century-old structure, deliberately broken apart by yet another purpose-built space vehicle and scattered across thousands of square miles of open water where the ocean is 2.5 miles deep.

Mark J. Spalding is the President & CEO of The Ocean Foundation.

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