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Point Nemo is a dumping ground for spaceship wrecks. (Photo: NOAA)
JAKARTA – There is the loneliest place on earth, called Point Nemo. This place is so remote that it has become a dumping ground for plane wrecks.
The location of Point Nemo is so remote that it takes days to cross the ocean as far as 2,688 kilometers. There are only a group of small islands inhabited only by flocks of birds.
Located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Point Nemo is also known as the pole of inaccessibility. South of Easter Island, and north of Antarctica, this ocean is as far as the eye can see, and sinks to depths of more than 4 kilometers.
Reporting from Livescience, Tuesday (5/12/2023), since the 1970s, the global space program has used the sea at Point Nemo as a place to drop nearly 300 plane wrecks, including space stations and satellites.
Sinking a spaceship into the ocean might seem like an extreme step. However, this alternative method is a solution.
Sti Lemmens, a space debris analyst at the European Space Agency, and other researchers identified aluminum particles in the atmosphere, which they believe did not come from meteorites or the earth. It most likely came from spacecraft that disintegrated when they re-entered the potentially polluting atmosphere before reaching Point Nemo’s ocean depths.
Currently, there are 40,000 known man-made objects orbiting planet Earth. The denser the collection of space debris, the greater the risk of collisions.
As a result, a question arises about the consequences of dropping these objects back into remote areas. “As a consequence of keeping space clean, we must ensure that we do not needlessly pollute the Earth,” Lemmes said.
MG/Athaya Ramadhan
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