Talk:Graveyard orbit

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)

Rationale for a higher orbit ?
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? &mdash;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)

Wouldn't tidal effects also cause satellites above GEO to gradually increase in altitude?--Witan (talk) 02:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think there is orbital increase, not orbital decay, above geosynchronous orbit. So "graveyard" satellites will never come back to geosynchronous orbit, unless massively perturbed by some astronomical body.--Roentgenium111 (talk) 21:18, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Why does orbital increase occur? There is an "orbital decay" page but no "orbital growth" page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SamISmyth (talk • contribs) 00:19, 16 May 2013 (UTC)


 * The mechanism of orbit increase is described concisely on the "Moon" page under 4.4, Tidal effects, in the third paragraph. But it's not included in this page, the "Orbital decay" page which now exists, nor on the "Orbit" page.  While I'm inclined to think the explanation provided in the "Moon" page might be helpful in the other three pages, I defer to others because I feel too inexperienced to competently judge how to manage duplication of information in Wikipedia.  So I've made no changes.--H Bruce Campbell (talk) 09:50, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Worldwide perspective tag removed
Orbits are governed by the laws of physics, which are universal, so the use of the "worldwide" tag seems a bit quixotic. In any case, there was no comment place in talk, so it is impossible to know what the objection is or to evaluate whether it has been addressed. Accordingly, I have removed the tag. Robert A.West (Talk) 22:21, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

... Filter down ...
"recent findings have shown that satellites left in a graveyard orbit will slowly break apart as micrometeorites hit them, and the smaller fragments will filter back down to lower altitudes"

This claim has been here for 3 years with no evidence to back it up. The micrometeorite impact rate above geosynchronous orbit is tiny and the particles produced will tend to stay in roughly circular orbits. What would cause the fragments to "filter back down to lower altitudes"? This needs some solid evidence or it should be deleted. Mtpaley (talk) 20:10, 11 April 2011 (UTC) (did my PhD in this area)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Graveyard orbit. ... I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20050308040713/http://www.space.com:80/spacenews/businessmonday_040628.html to http://www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_040628.html


 * ✅ An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 17:45, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Effects of solar pressure
Can we add a description of the long term effects of the solar radiation pressure (SRP). That term in the equation seems to represent an acceleration of the satellite. Over an orbit the SRP lowers and raises the orbit, but is there also a cumulative effect over many orbits eg to increase the eccentricity ? - Rod57 (talk) 10:29, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Graveyard Orbit Animation - Orbital Period scale
In the Graveyard Orbit Animation, it appears that the scale for Orbital Period between 0 and 5, only contains 4 intermediate tic marks, while the other periods (5 tp 10, 10 to 15, etc) contain 5 tic marks. It is inconsistent and confusing, since I was expecting to see the ISS orbital period at around 90 minutes, but the scale provided does not logically reflect that. SquashEngineer (talk) 14:58, 22 January 2021 (UTC)