Most isolated place on Earth where nearest people to you are astronauts in space
- Point Nemo is one of the most remote places on the planet
- You can only reach it by boat and the journey would take you several weeks
- It’s also known as a cemetery for broken spaceships and satellites
Published on Jan 29, 2024 at 8:22 PM (UTC+4)
by Andie Reeves
Last updated on Feb 02, 2024 at 8:31 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Alessandro Renesis
Point Nemo is the ultimate spot for a quiet getaway.
It’s far away from tourists and the bustling city lights and is one of the most remote places on Earth.
In fact, it’s so remote that your closest neighbours will be astronauts in space.
The only problem is you’ll need a boat and several weeks to get there.
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Point Nemo, also known as the ‘Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility’, is the part of the ocean that is most furthest away from any land.
The three closest land masses are 1,670 miles away and include an island in Antarctica and one in the Easter Island chain.
This makes it the most isolated spot on the planet.
If this sounds like your idea of the perfect peaceful holiday, you’re out of luck.
Point Nemo is basically just a spot in the ocean, surrounded by nothing but more ocean.
If you wanted to travel there it would take many weeks by boat, in rough and dangerous seas.
The man who discovered it in 1992 hasn’t even gone there: he used a computer programme to figure out its coordinates.
The area gets its name from the Latin word for ‘no one’, referring to the fact that there is nobody there.
Weirdly, if you were to find yourself here, the closest human to you would be the astronauts at the ISS 260 miles away.
But you’d have to mind your head for falling space debris, like the toolbox a pair of astronauts dropped recently.
Point Nemo is known as a cemetery for space junk.
Because humans don’t live anywhere nearby, it’s apparently the perfect place to discard items from space.
Autonomous spaceships and satellites aren’t engineered to withstand re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere so disintegrate when they do.
NASA started using Point Nemo in 1971 as the spot to land any unusable space junk from these expeditions, including its first space station, Skylab.
Currently, there are about 263 bits of broken space equipment in the area.
This has to be up there with one of the most mysterious and unusual places on the planet, next to the island that’s blacked out on Google Maps and the forbidden island connected to New York City by tunnels.
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Andie is a content writer from South Africa with a background in broadcasting and journalism. Starting her career in the glossy pages of Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire, Andie has a broad portfolio, covering everything from sustainability solutions to celebrity car collections. When not at her laptop Andie can be found sewing, recording her podcast, taking board games too seriously or road-tripping in her bright green Kia.