The Most Remote Place on Earth Is So Isolated, Spacecraft Are Sent There to Die

There is a point in the South Pacific Ocean so isolated that the nearest piece of land is roughly 1,670 miles away. There is no island at the location, no buoy marking it, no research station, and no rocky outcrop breaking the surface. It is simply open ocean in every direction. The place is known as Point Nemo, and mathematically, it is the most remote location in the world's oceans. Point Nemo is the oceanic pole of inaccessibility, meaning it is the point on the ocean's surface that lies farther from land than any other point on Earth. Its commonly cited coordinates are 48°52.6′ south and 123°23.6′ west, placing it deep in the South Pacific, far from the major shipping routes and population centers of the planet. The nearest land is about 2,688 kilometers, or 1,670 miles, away. Even more remarkably, Point Nemo sits almost equally distant from three different pieces of land. Ducie Island in the Pitcairn Islands lies to the north. Motu Nui, a small rocky islet near Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, sits to the northeast. Maher Island, near Antarctica, lies to the south. None of those places offers much comfort to someone imagining being stranded at Point Nemo. Ducie is an uninhabited coral atoll. Motu Nui is a tiny offshore islet rather than a populated refuge. Maher Island is a remote Antarctic island surrounded by some of the harshest conditions on the planet. Even reaching land from Point Nemo would mean crossing an enormous stretch of open ocean. Unlike a mountain summit or an island, Point Nemo was not discovered by someone physically arriving there. Its position had to be calculated. Croatian-Canadian survey engineer Hrvoje Lukatela identified the location in 1992 using geospatial computer calculations. His work determined where a point could be placed in the ocean so that the nearest land in every direction would be as far away as possible. The name was inspired by Captain Nemo, the fictional submarine commander created by Jules Verne in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The choice was especially fitting because "nemo" also means "nobody" in Latin. For a location surrounded by thousands of kilometers of almost uninterrupted ocean, the name could hardly be more appropriate. One of the strangest facts about Point Nemo involves the people who may occasionally be closest to it. When the International Space Station passes over the region, astronauts can be only a few hundred kilometers above the point. That means there are moments when humans orbiting Earth are much closer to Point Nemo than people standing anywhere on land. The isolation that makes Point Nemo fascinating to geographers also makes the surrounding South Pacific useful to space agencies. For decades, mission controllers have deliberately directed some large spacecraft into a remote region of ocean near Point Nemo at the ends of their operational lives. The area is commonly called the spacecraft cemetery or spacecraft graveyard. Its extreme distance from populated land dramatically reduces the risk that surviving pieces of a spacecraft will fall onto cities, buildings, ships, or people during a controlled reentry. A spacecraft returning from orbit does not simply land intact at Point Nemo. Most of it burns up as it tears through Earth's atmosphere at enormous speed. Components that survive the heat and aerodynamic forces can continue toward the ocean. Engineers therefore aim controlled reentries toward a large uninhabited region of the South Pacific rather than toward land. The former Soviet and Russian Mir space station is one of the best-known spacecraft associated with this region. When Mir's long career ended in 2001, operators conducted a controlled deorbit. Much of the enormous station burned up in the atmosphere while surviving debris fell into a designated area of the South Pacific. Numerous Russian Progress cargo spacecraft, European Automated Transfer Vehicles, Japanese cargo vehicles, and other spacecraft have also been disposed of in the broader remote ocean region. Point Nemo itself should not be imagined as a single underwater junk pile with hundreds of spacecraft stacked directly beneath its coordinates. The actual reentry zone covers an enormous area. Spacecraft can break apart over thousands of kilometers, and their surviving components may splash down far from Point Nemo's exact mathematical position. The name has become shorthand for the much larger remote region used for controlled spacecraft disposal. The same basic strategy is expected to play a role when the International Space Station eventually reaches the end of its life. NASA and its international partners have planned for a controlled deorbit of the station after operations conclude, sending its remains toward the remote South Pacific rather than allowing such a massive structure to make an uncontrolled return to Earth. The ocean around Point Nemo is unusual for another reason. It lies within the South Pacific Gyre, a massive system of rotating ocean currents. The region is extremely far from continents, which means relatively little nutrient-rich material arrives from land. Ocean circulation also limits the amount of nutrients brought into the surface waters from elsewhere. As a result, portions of this enormous region contain remarkably low levels of biological productivity compared with richer coastal waters. That does not mean the ocean around Point Nemo is completely lifeless. Microorganisms and marine organisms exist throughout the South Pacific, but the surface waters around the center of the gyre are among the most nutrient-poor parts of the global ocean. Even the remoteness of Point Nemo has not protected it completely from humanity. Researchers studying isolated regions of the Pacific have detected plastic pollution far from major landmasses, demonstrating just how widely human debris can travel through ocean currents. There is also nothing visually dramatic waiting for someone who reaches the coordinates. Point Nemo does not look like the edge of civilization. There is no sign announcing arrival at Earth's most inaccessible ocean point. A sailor crossing the exact position would see essentially what they had seen for hundreds of miles before reaching it and what they would continue seeing for hundreds of miles afterward: water meeting sky. That is part of what makes Point Nemo so extraordinary. Most famous geographic extremes have something physical marking them. Mount Everest rises above the Himalayas. The Mariana Trench plunges into the deepest part of the ocean. The poles occupy recognizable positions on maps and have been visited by expeditions. Point Nemo exists because of geometry. It is an invisible point calculated from the shape of Earth's landmasses, surrounded by a circle of ocean so enormous that almost the entire continental United States could fit within a comparable span. There are few places left on Earth where the idea of genuine isolation still feels convincing. Satellites photograph nearly every corner of the planet, aircraft cross oceans daily, and ships move enormous amounts of cargo between continents. Yet at 48.87667 degrees south and 123.39333 degrees west, there is still a place where land is more than 1,600 miles away in every direction. There is nothing there to see. And that is exactly what makes Point Nemo remarkable.