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June 15th, 2016 | #1 |
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 27,577
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This Is Where The International Space Station Will Go To Die
This Is Where The International Space Station Will Go To Die In one of the most isolated places on the globe, the 'Spacecraft Cemetery' provides a watery grave The cold void of the ocean floor is the closest thing Earthlings can come to the conditions of space. Nothing really lives there, and nothing ever visits. It’s freezing, dark and empty. However, off the coast of New Zealand, the Pacific Ocean is home to what may be the most exclusive scientific burial ground in the world: the so-called Spacecraft Cemetery has become the final resting place for hundreds of manmade space objects. http://www.popsci.com/this-is-where-...will-go-to-die |
June 15th, 2016 | #2 |
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2014
Posts: 15,170
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Even though most satellites and other space junk burn completely up on re-entry, a lot of times fairly good-sized pieces still survive. For example, when NASA's derelict Skylab space station re-entered Earth's atmosphere in 1979, large pieces of it survived and fell on Australia, but fortunately no one was injured by them. Hence, the South Pacific graveyard for objects that still have power and rocket fuel aboard so they can be intentionally de-orbited to that location. Thousands of other objects will still make uncontrolled re-entries once their orbits decay.
ISS is due to be de-orbited some time in the 2020s once its operational life is over. It's too bad NASA can't just boost it into a higher orbit at that time to preserve the station as an historic monument, I wish they would.
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