4 ms·

Unfortunately that's too simple: imagine a collusion with a low orbit satellite which explodes, some part of the debris will be boosted to an higher height..

• PeterisP 5y ago
  No, that's not really how orbits work - after a collision or explosion, the orbit of every created shard will still pass through the point of collision, so if a satellite in circular LEO gets exploded, much of the debris will be boosted to a more elliptical orbit where the apogee may be higher, potentially much higher, but the perigee - where the majority of the drag happens, in a very nonlinear manner - will be lower than that LEO orbit or at the very worst case the same as it, having an elliptical orbit that comes down to the atmosphere, slowing down at every iteration. There's no physical way for a single event to bring something up from a low circular orbit to a higher orbit that's fully out of that low altitude zone, that requires circularization for which spaceships need to do another burn at the opposite (high) point of the orbit. If some circular orbit is in a LEO "gonna burn up soon" zone, then the debris from a crash there won't leave the zone because all the elliptical orbits that pass through points on that circle also have as much or more "gonna burn up soon" property.
  • renox 5y ago
    Nice explanation, thanks for correcting my mistake.