7 ms·

Why boost-up to a graveyard orbit rather than "booting-down" to decay and presumably burn up on re-entry?

ars 7y ago
It might be too high. It takes rather a lot of energy of change orbits and it might not be possible to get it close enough to earth for drag to take over.
Iv 7y ago
Because it takes a lot of fuel to go from GEO to an orbit that would touch the atmosphere. It is not like a low orbit where a small perturbation will easily bring the satellite close enough to the atmosphere so that it brakes naturally. According to this graph [1], you need about a third of the delta-v budget it took to get to GEO in order to get back into LEO. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Delta-Vs_for_inner_Solar_System.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Delta-Vs_for_inner_Solar_...
- tectonic 7y ago
  True, although it's not in a GEO orbit.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  That chart is for circular orbits AFAIK; you need less than half of that to lower one apsis to touch the atmosphere, and the air will do rest of the work. Still probably not worth it.
positr0n 7y ago
As other commenters mentioned, it is just too far away to do that. To give you a sense of scale, if you reduce Earth to the size of a basketball, low earth orbit (space station, starlink, etc) would be less than a quarter inch above the surface of the basketball. Geosynchronous orbit is a ring around the equator 26 inches above the surface of the basketball. This is also why Starlink is incomparable to existing satellite internet solutions.
- Nition 7y ago
  There's a nice visualisation of the different orbits at http://stuffin.space http://stuffin.space
  - cmroanirgo 7y ago
    Wow. Thanks for that, what a great visualisation, and updating too! Edit: This is the satellite being talked about in the article http://stuffin.space/?intldes=1998-030A http://stuffin.space/?intldes=1998-030A
  - squarefoot 7y ago
    That site is fantastic, thanks! And it also indexes debris; just enter "DEB" into the search box to get data on all known debris in orbit.
- DagAgren 7y ago
  It's not in geosynchronous, though, it's in low earth.
avian 7y ago
Apart from what others have mentioned, they "boost up" to a graveyard orbit instead of down to avoid old satellites or their potential debris clouds from eclipsing Earth for their replacements or posing a collision risk on the geostationary transfer orbit.
- DagAgren 7y ago
  It's not in geostationary orbit though.

ars 7y ago

It might be too high. It takes rather a lot of energy of change orbits and it might not be possible to get it close enough to earth for drag to take over.

Iv 7y ago

Because it takes a lot of fuel to go from GEO to an orbit that would touch the atmosphere. It is not like a low orbit where a small perturbation will easily bring the satellite close enough to the atmosphere so that it brakes naturally. According to this graph [1], you need about a third of the delta-v budget it took to get to GEO in order to get back into LEO. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Delta-Vs_for_inner_Solar_System.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Delta-Vs_for_inner_Solar_...

tectonic 7y ago
True, although it's not in a GEO orbit.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
That chart is for circular orbits AFAIK; you need less than half of that to lower one apsis to touch the atmosphere, and the air will do rest of the work. Still probably not worth it.

positr0n 7y ago

As other commenters mentioned, it is just too far away to do that. To give you a sense of scale, if you reduce Earth to the size of a basketball, low earth orbit (space station, starlink, etc) would be less than a quarter inch above the surface of the basketball. Geosynchronous orbit is a ring around the equator 26 inches above the surface of the basketball. This is also why Starlink is incomparable to existing satellite internet solutions.

Nition 7y ago
There's a nice visualisation of the different orbits at http://stuffin.space http://stuffin.space
- cmroanirgo 7y ago
  Wow. Thanks for that, what a great visualisation, and updating too! Edit: This is the satellite being talked about in the article http://stuffin.space/?intldes=1998-030A http://stuffin.space/?intldes=1998-030A
- squarefoot 7y ago
  That site is fantastic, thanks! And it also indexes debris; just enter "DEB" into the search box to get data on all known debris in orbit.
DagAgren 7y ago
It's not in geosynchronous, though, it's in low earth.

avian 7y ago

Apart from what others have mentioned, they "boost up" to a graveyard orbit instead of down to avoid old satellites or their potential debris clouds from eclipsing Earth for their replacements or posing a collision risk on the geostationary transfer orbit.

DagAgren 7y ago
It's not in geostationary orbit though.