In the middle of the South Pacific, about 2,688 km from the nearest land, there is a nameless stretch of sea that is very cold, where stormy winds blow and it is constantly rough. It is a deadly place where the sky can be seen changing its colors. British seafaring record holder De Cafari is among the few people who have traveled to this remote part of the ocean. He says that the southern sea is many shades of gray and there can be stormy waves. This place is very spacious but also a little scary.

In this remote location where there is no soul, and in such a place there is very little chance of survival if you get into trouble. If you're lucky enough to be stuck there during “The Ocean Race”, the only signs of life you might see are the triangular shark fin-like sails just above the surface of the water in the distance. And if it is not, then understand that your luck has left you. The area is not used for any normal human activity such as shipping or fishing. In fact, the closest humans out there are often explorers of a very different kind, and those are astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) who may be 415 kilometers above your head. This point in the middle of the ocean is known as the Pole of Inaccessibility or simply as 'Point Nemo'.

If you look for Point Nemo on a world map, you'll find it in the middle of a continuous stretch of blue water between New Zealand and Chile. More precisely, it lies between an uninhabited atoll of Dussey Island, which is part of the Pitcairn Islands, to the north. To the south is the Myr Island of Antarctica, to the west is the Chatham Islands, and to the east is Chile. It is a place that is the most isolated and lonely in the ocean. Here are the least signs of life. Even the sea floor is some 13,000 feet, or two and a half miles, below its surface. However, in this empty wasteland between the icy, empty waters and the ISS, there is also a graveyard known as the “Spacecraft Graveyard”. And in this vast region lies the debris of defunct spaceships orbiting the Earth.

Between 1971 and 2018, global space powers including the United States, Russia, Japan, and Europe launched more than 263 spacecraft in the uninhabited area of ​​the ocean around Point Nemo. The list includes a Soviet-era space station and six aircraft from the country's Selyut program, as well as 140 Russian resupply vehicles, six cargo transfer vehicles launched by Japan, and five European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft. Vehicles are included. SpaceX's capsule rockets are believed to have landed in this ocean trash recently. Coincidentally, its nearest neighbor, the ISS, is also going to be buried at this remote location in eight years. How does a spaceship end up at Point Nemo? What broken, twisted remains lie in its immense depths at this time? And what will future archaeologists make of it all?

On March 23, 2001, at 8:59 a.m. Moscow time, a group of Russian cosmonauts began looking into the sky from the island of Fiji in the South Pacific. It was a moment the country's space agency had been preparing for for more than a year. But it was soon over as a series of golden lights flashed across the sky for a few seconds, followed by a trail of smoke. was the scene accompanied by a sonic boom or sound explosion. It occurs when objects travel faster than the speed of sound, creating shock waves.

It was the day the Mir space station died after traveling 1.9 billion kilometers around the world. The world's first modular space station re-entered Earth's atmosphere with all of its 134-ton payload. It initially crossed the threshold from outer space over Japan, then over the uninhabited region of the South Pacific (Sapoa). Hit. The area of ​​Point Nemo is 34 times larger than France. Soon after that, rumors began to circulate on the Internet that pieces of it had started floating and had been found elsewhere. All these things are lies and not a single part of it has been found anywhere. It has been swallowed by the Pacific Ocean and its fragments are lying for several kilometers around it.

The question is, how will these and other defunct spacecraft that have made similar journeys survive the Earth's atmosphere and sudden ocean landings due to their radiation? Gas molecules come in which surround our planet. Space debris falling at about 28,164 km/h, whether it's a meteorite or an old spacecraft or a plane carrying human passengers, all push the air out of its path with such force that it causes chemical bonds to break and form an electrically charged plasma.

This causes them to burn up, and in the case of smaller objects they cease to exist and evaporate before they hit the ground, but this does not happen with the more massive remnants. Alice Gorman, associate professor of space archeology at the University of Flanders in Australia, says the parts of the spacecraft that re-enter Earth's confines are the most intact. Usually, they are designed to withstand extremes of heat or pressure to serve their intended purpose.

"Often it's fuel tanks or rocket boosters that survive because they either contain cryogenic fuel (a gas propellant that cools and condenses until it liquefies) or they're burning at really high temperatures," he said. are, so the fuel tanks have to be really strong to withstand them. These typically represent the largest solid objects on a spacecraft or rocket and are protected with additional insulation. "They have a lot of stainless steel, aluminum alloys, titanium alloys," she says.

Insulation is often made from carbon compounds such as carbon fiber that do not burn when heated. Even its earliest prototypes could withstand temperatures of up to 287 degrees Celsius. In most cases, Guzman says, we don't know about the final fate of spacecraft once they re-enter Earth's atmosphere. Knowers only guess. "All we know is where they are, but we haven't seen them." No one went there (around Point Nemo) with a research vessel or went down to the bottom to see their condition.'