3 ms·

Also, small satellites have much higher surface area to mass ratios.

• rtkwe 11y ago
  Yeah that's another big factor in how fast they decay. The fact that they deorbit easily is good though, if they stayed up for a long time it'd be harder for NASA to approve so many so easily because they'd become a threat to LEO operations. A lot of them are launched from the ISS.
  • dharma1 11y ago
    How do the approvals work if you are not in the US?
    • rtkwe 11y ago
      The ESA and JAXA both seem to run approvals too. I'm not sure about their current plans/proposal request statuses the only ones a surface googling finds are several years old so they might be in between proposal cycles.