What is the name of the area where hundreds of decommissioned satellites, space stations, and other spacecraft have been made to fall there upon re-entering the atmosphere, to lessen the risk of hitting inhabited locations? Nowadays the area is also known as a “spacecraft cemetery”.
Note
Point Nemo, nowadays also known as a "spacecraft cemetery", is the name of the area where hundreds of decommissioned satellites, space stations, and other spacecraft have been made to fall there upon re-entering the atmosphere, to lessen the risk of hitting inhabited locations.
Point Nemo is relatively lifeless; its location within the South Pacific Gyre blocks nutrients from reaching the area, and being so far from land it gets little nutrient run-off from coastal waters. The area is so remote that—as with any location more than 400 kilometres (250 mi) from an inhabited area—sometimes the closest human beings are astronauts aboard the International Space Station when it passes overhead.
Point Nemo was first discovered by survey engineer Hrvoje Lukatela in 1992. In 2022, Lukatela recalculated the coordinates of Point Nemo using OpenStreetMap data as well as Google Maps data in order to compare those results with the coordinates he first calculated using Digital Chart of the World data.