For more than half a century, humanity has been quietly directing its spent machines toward the most solitary place on Earth — a coordinate in the South Pacific known as Point Nemo, where no land interrupts the horizon for nearly 2,700 kilometres in any direction. Since 1971, at least 263 spacecraft have followed this path, not to rest intact on the seafloor, but to disintegrate across vast ocean corridors in a controlled act of engineering humility. As the International Space Station approaches the end of its life, the largest and most complex structure ever assembled in orbit will one day jo