Added 1 new A* page:If you guessed that the oceanic pole of inaccessibility is the spot in the ocean furthest from land, you are correct! And because of that remoteness, space agencies not wanting to hit anyone with their de-orbiting spacecraft have turned that spot on Earth, in the southern Pacific Ocean (also known as "Point Nemo," "nemo" being Latin for "no one") into our planet's spacecraft cemetary: "more than 263 spacecraft were disposed of in this area between 1971 and 2016." China, whose Tiangong-1 ("Heavenly Palace 1") prototype space station has in recent months been reported to be out of control and destined to crash down in an uncontrolled manner somewhere on Earth, now says that the station is *not* out of control, and that they delayed the scheduled September 2017 re-entry "in order to ensure that the wreckage would fall into an area of the South Pacific ocean where debris from Russian and U.S. space stations had previously landed"—which is the oceanic pole of inaccessibility, as we all now know. : ) Some western analysts are skeptical of China's claim of having the station under control; in this case, let's hope they can hit the bullseye! : o
|