4 ms·

Small satellites have a high surface area to mass ratio and thus decay due to drag much faster. I.e. on the order of a few years at most.

by ummonk 7y ago

Rebelgecko 7y ago
What are you considering small or a few years? Smallsats like Starlink is using can take 100+ years to deorbit from drag in LEO (at the 1100km orbits they haven't started deploying to yet— for the orbits they're currently using the deorbit time is on the order of a few years). Even if you're talking about 1U cubesats (~1kg and 10cmx10cmx10cm), those can take decades. The first cubesats ever built are still on orbit. Going even smaller, there are still small droplets of coolant in LEO from nuclear reactors that the USSR launched 50 years ago. The droplets are more or less spheres with diameters in the 5mm-5cm range.
- andai 7y ago
  This is fascinating. What are (or were) those reactors for?
  - Rebelgecko 7y ago
    There were used to power Soviet reconnaissance satellites that used radar to track ships. The satellites themselves were in really low orbits (~200km), and they didn't want to use solar panels due to additional drag and inability to generate power at night. When the satellites were deactivated, they were supposed to eject their nuclear reactors (actual nuclear reactors, not RTGs[1]) to a higher orbit before the satellite reentered. The program had a number of "oopsies". A lot of the reactors leaked, and are actually one of the biggest sources of space junk today. I think they were the #1 source of space junk before China's antisatellite weapon test. The biggest oopsie was when some of the satellites malfunctioned and weren't able to eject their reactors. One of them landed in the ocean. The other didn't— it ended up spreading radioactive debris across a good chunk of northern Canada. Some of the pieces of debris where radioactive enough to cause serious harm, so it was fortunate that the junk landed in unpopulated areas. [1]: RTGs are how most nuclear powered things in space generate electricity— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...

Small satellites have a high surface area to mass ratio and thus decay due to drag much faster. I.e. on the order of a few years at most.

by ummonk 7y ago

Small satellites have a high surface area to mass ratio and thus decay due to drag much faster. I.e. on the order of a few years at most.

Rebelgecko 7y ago

What are you considering small or a few years? Smallsats like Starlink is using can take 100+ years to deorbit from drag in LEO (at the 1100km orbits they haven't started deploying to yet— for the orbits they're currently using the deorbit time is on the order of a few years). Even if you're talking about 1U cubesats (~1kg and 10cmx10cmx10cm), those can take decades. The first cubesats ever built are still on orbit. Going even smaller, there are still small droplets of coolant in LEO from nuclear reactors that the USSR launched 50 years ago. The droplets are more or less spheres with diameters in the 5mm-5cm range.

andai 7y ago
This is fascinating. What are (or were) those reactors for?
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  There were used to power Soviet reconnaissance satellites that used radar to track ships. The satellites themselves were in really low orbits (~200km), and they didn't want to use solar panels due to additional drag and inability to generate power at night. When the satellites were deactivated, they were supposed to eject their nuclear reactors (actual nuclear reactors, not RTGs[1]) to a higher orbit before the satellite reentered. The program had a number of "oopsies". A lot of the reactors leaked, and are actually one of the biggest sources of space junk today. I think they were the #1 source of space junk before China's antisatellite weapon test. The biggest oopsie was when some of the satellites malfunctioned and weren't able to eject their reactors. One of them landed in the ocean. The other didn't— it ended up spreading radioactive debris across a good chunk of northern Canada. Some of the pieces of debris where radioactive enough to cause serious harm, so it was fortunate that the junk landed in unpopulated areas. [1]: RTGs are how most nuclear powered things in space generate electricity— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...