Space agencies all over the world couldn't believe their telemetry.

Slated for deorbit, the International Space Station had been abandoned. The crews departed. They took their experiments. They removed the hard drives and choice souvenirs. The Soyuz capsules were packed and fell away from the station- back to Earth. The last astronaut to leave even turned off the lights.

ISS made its final orbits as scheduled. Commercial air traffic over the Pacific was diverted. Point Nemo-the point farthest from land anywhere on the planet was a media circus. Major networks from all over the world flocked to the Oceanic Point of Inaccessibility.

There were ships from all of the world's major navies, private chartered ships and even a few cruise ships. Their decks were covered in telescopes, broadcast teams and scientific equipment. All eyes were on the sky. They were waiting to see the largest object ever put into orbit to come screaming back down after 30 years.

ISS had been a temporary home to hundreds of astronauts from dozens of countries. The best and brightest of humanity flew around the Earth 16 times per day aboard ISS. The astronauts, cosmonauts and taikonauts did science, they learned, they taught and became beacons for all of humanity.

NASA, Roscosmos and the ESA watched from their control rooms, they knew to the meter exactly where ISS would fall and when. That time was fast approaching.

A flight dynamics officer from NASA was the first to notice something was wrong. The altitude readings. They had stopped falling. The officer called out to mission control who told the officer to try resetting the data feed. There was no way all the GPS satellites had the same error. It must be the control room software.

By the time the system rebooted the problem had gotten worse. Now the altitude number wasn't just not falling. It was increasing.

Observers on the decks of the ships at Point Nemo checked their watches and craned their necks. Maybe the countdown was off. They should be able to see the giant station's fireball by now.

The thing is, when a place or thing is loved very dearly; when it becomes the object of the dreams of generations of children; when it is known so fondly by all-something strange happens. Little pieces of the souls it touches rub off on it.

The ISS was built for space. It was built in space. Space had been its home for 3 decades. The soul of the ISS didn't want to leaves its home. So it flew.

It gained altitude. Its orbit raised and raised until its apogee was well above low Earth orbit. The ISS flew higher. It passed the satellites and space junk. It passed Hubble and Vanguard I and all the abandoned rocket stages from the last 80 years.

Astronomers watched as it rose away. Nobody knew how it raised its orbit. Other space craft tracked it with all their sensors and no data revealed why or how ISS escaped its watery fate.

ISS eventually left Earth orbit all together. It flew and flew.

Its home was space.