Point Nemo: The Loneliest Place on Earth and the Final Resting Place for the ISS

After decades of orbiting Earth, spacecraft face a predestined fate: a fiery re-entry followed by a final plunge into "Point Nemo." Located in the South Pacific, this "Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility" is the furthest point from any land, making the astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) the closest humans to it when they fly overhead.

Point Nemo serves as the world's largest space cemetery, housing the remains of the Russian Mir station and the Salyut series. In 2031, the ISS—a jewel of human engineering—will join them. While most toxic fuels burn up in the atmosphere, fragments of steel and aluminum settle on the ocean floor. Meanwhile, deep-space probes like Voyager are destined to drift eternally through the cosmos, while others, like Cassini, were intentionally destroyed in planetary atmospheres to prevent biological contamination of alien moons.