The International Space Station just notched a major milestone, but its days are numbered.

Sunday (Nov. 2) marked the 25th anniversary of continuous human occupation of the International Space Station (ISS), which has carved out a spot in the history books as one of our species' grandest (and most expensive) technological achievements.

Don't save any confetti for a semicentennial celebration, however — the ISS is in its home stretch. NASA and its partners plan to deorbit the aging outpost toward the end of 2030, using a modified, extra-burly version of SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule to bring it down over an uninhabited stretch of ocean.

And not just any stretch — the "spacecraft cemetery," a patch of the Pacific centered on Point Nemo, which is named after the famous submarine captain in

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