Point Nemo: Facts about the Earth’s farthest point from land

Point Nemo is not only the middle of nowhere, it is also a spacecraft graveyard: the place where NASA and other space agencies crash their de-orbited satellites, space stations, and other decommissioned spacecraft.

Point Nemo is also referred to as the oceanic pole of inaccessibility.

This means that it is the place on the ocean that is furthest away from any land. A pole of inaccessibility refers to a place on Earth that is the most inaccessible to reach according to set criteria. On land, it often refers to the point that is farthest from the coastline.

Poles of inaccessibility include:

The exact location of Point Nemo is calculated as4852.6S12323.6W or 49.0273S 123.4345W. That is 1,680.7 miles (2,704.8 km) from the nearest islands in the South Pacific Ocean: Ducie Island, an uninhabited atoll that is part of the Pitcairn Islands, to the north; Motu Nui, the largest of three islets near Easter Island, to the northeast; and Maher Island, off the coast of Antarcticas unclaimed territory of Marie Byrd Land, to the south.

All of these islands are uninhabited. To find civilization, youd have to go to Easter Island (Rapa Nui) one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world, about 2,200 miles (3,540 kilometers) to the east of Chile or to New Zealand, about 2,500 miles (4,023 kilometers) away.

Because there are no airports at Point Nemo, this trip can only be made by boat, and it could take more than two weeks to complete.

In the meantime, the nearest humans to Point Nemo are often the astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), who, when they pass directly over Point Nemo, are just about 258 miles (415 kilometers) away much closer than any other human on Earth at that point.

The location of Point Nemo was first calculated in 1992 by Croatian-Canadian survey engineer Hrvoje Lukatela, based on the data from the Digital Chart of the World compiled by the US Defense Mapping Agency (this is now theNational Geospatial-Intelligence Agency).Lukatela usedcomputational software to give a numerical resolution of around 1mm.

Read the original:

Point Nemo: Facts about the Earth's farthest point from land