Nemo," by the way, means "no one" in Latin.
Lost in the vast Pacific, Point Nemo lies a staggering 3,000 miles from New Zealand and a further 2,000 miles north of Antarctica. Its isolation is so extreme, that the closest neighbours are often astronauts aboard the International Space Station, orbiting hundreds of miles above. This very remoteness makes it the chosen resting place for the ISS, destined to join other retired spacecraft in their watery graveyard upon its 2030 retirement.
Officially called an "oceanic pole of inaccessibility," this watery graveyard for titanium fuel tanks and other high-tech space debris is better known to space junkies as Point Nemo, in honour of Jules Verne's fictional submarine captain. According to CNN, spacefaring nations have been dumping their junk in the area around Point Nemo named after Captain Nemo from Jules Verne's novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea," since the 1970s.
Point Nemo, also known as the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility or South Pacific Ocean Uninhabited Area, holds the title of Earth's most remote location. Its precise coordinates were pinpointed in 1992 by Canadian-Russian engineer Hrvoje Lukatela.
Since 1971, this isolated spot has served as the final resting place for over 263 pieces of space debris, according to a 2019 study. These include notable entries like Russia's Mir space station and NASA's Skylab, but unlike pristine monuments, they likely lie fragmented across a vast area.
"This is the largest ocean area without any islands. It is just the safest area where the long fall-out zone of debris after a re-entry fits into," Holger Krag, Head of the Space Safety Programme Office at the European Space Agency told CNN.
Point Nemo lies beyond the jurisdiction of any state and lacks human presence, yet it bears the marks of human influence. Aside from the space debris resting on the ocean floor, microplastic particles were found in the waters as yachts participating in the Volvo Ocean Race traversed the area in 2018.