Talk:Graveyard orbit
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[edit] IADC guidelines
The IADC guidelines are for satellites within 15° of the equatorial plane. Need to add this to the article. —Taka2007 05:36, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Rationale?
What's the rationale of moving obsolete satellites into a higher orbit? Wouldn't orbital decay eventually cause them to drop back into geosynchronous altitude at some random slot, possibly colliding with a functioning satellite? —QuicksilverT @ 18:22, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
- Such a decay would take hundreds of years to reach back down to GSO/GEO. They typically move above GEO/GSO because future satellites will need to pass through any subsynchronous disposal orbit. -Taka2007 19:20, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
- As the article says, it takes less fuel to move them up higher. Therefore, disposal in a graveyard orbit means a longer service life. Plus, the graveyard orbit can be made slightly off-plane to the 24-hour orbit, so that when the satellite's perigee does come back down, the satellite only goes through the 24-hour orbit twice a day at known times over longer orbital periods, and for short durations. 147.145.40.43 22:35, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
- Longer service life - that depends on how you see it. For satellite operators, the alternative would be to just leave the satellite where it is, saving an amount of fuel that would be needed for about 3 months of stationkeeping. Second thing: Out-of plane maneuvers are never performed when re-orbiting a satellite, the focus is on raising the perigee altitude as high as possible above the GEO protected region. Orbit perturbations due to lunar and solar gravity will cause a precession motion of the orbit plane normal vector anyway, reaching about 15 degrees inclination, with an initial gradient of 0.85 degrees and a period of 53 years. The higher delta velocities between the uncontrolled objects and the controlled objects due to the orbit plane tilt are actually increasing collision risk. Mikeo 07:27, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
