• ieatpillowtags@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    All low earth orbits are decaying without periodic adjustments. If you disable a satellite, it will eventually burn up in the atmosphere.

    • uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5 months ago

      Some orbits are quicker than others. Cloudsat was recently retired, and was lowered to a graveyard orbit which decays a lot more quickly. As I understand it, our collective space programs have made a bit of a mess of operational orbits and we need to think about cleaning up debris while also mitigating any future additions to the debris field.