When China's derelict Tiangong-1 space station finally burns-up and is destroyed upon atmospheric re-entry sometime this year, let's hope this dangerous event occurs over the little known "Spacecraft Cemetery" in the vast Pacific Ocean where many spacecraft have "died" safely.

If Tiangong -1, presently in an uncontrolled freefall, does by some miracle smash into the Spacecraft Cemetery, it will become the first Chinese spacecraft to be "buried" there. If not and Tiangong-1's debris falls on populated areas, the burials are going to be of the human kind.

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The Spacecraft Cemetery is that patch of the Pacific, 3,900 kilometers southeast of Wellington, New Zealand that's the final resting place for 263 America, Russian, European and Japanese spacecraft whose pieces survived fiery re-entry from 1971 until this year.

The International Space Station (ISS) will be "buried" at the Spacecraft Cemetery when it finally burns-up in 2028 after being decommissioned in 2020. The money freed-up maintaining the ISS will give NASA a lot more money as it shoots for Mars.

The space agencies of space faring countries chose this remote spot as the place to command its spacecraft to die because there's a really, really tiny chance space debris might hit a person in this god forsaken piece of aquatic real estate.

The Spacecraft Cemetery is home to the charred "bones" of the Soviet Union's Mir space station that fell to Earth in 2001; the European Space Agency's "Jules Verne" Automated Transfer Vehicle and Japan's H-II Transfer Vehicle. They rest on the ocean floor 2.5 miles beneath the waves.

Also at the bottom of the Pacific are thousands of other spacecraft parts such as hundreds of cargo spacecraft that flew cargo to the ISS; fuel tanks and satellites. Most of the "tenants" in this cemetery are Russian.

There are more than 190 Russian tenants at the cemetery. There are 52 tenants from the United States; eight from Europe; six from Japan and one from SpaceX.

The Spacecraft Cemetery is technically called the "Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility," or the point on Earth farthest from any land mass. This inaccessibility drastically decreases the chance of spacecraft debris hitting anyone on the head. 

TagsSpacecraft Cemetery, Tiangong-1, Tiangong-1, International Space Station