Satellites Don’t Last Forever
Just like washing machines and vacuum cleaners, satellites eventually get old, wear out, and stop working. Whether they’re watching the weather, measuring gases in our atmosphere, or studying distant stars, every satellite has a lifespan. So what happens when their time is up?
Two Ways to Say Goodbye
Today, there are two main options for retiring satellites, and it depends on how high up they are in orbit.
Option 1: Burn Up in the Atmosphere
For satellites in lower orbits, engineers use the last bit of fuel to slow them down so they fall back toward Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. The intense heat from friction does the rest of the work!
For smaller satellites in low orbit, this process is straightforward – they burn up completely as they fall toward Earth at thousands of miles per hour. Problem solved!
Option 2: Push Them Even Farther Away
For satellites in very high orbits, it actually takes less fuel to push them farther into space than to bring them back to Earth. So that’s exactly what we do!
The Spacecraft Cemetery
But what about the big stuff? Large objects like space stations and bigger spacecraft might not burn up completely before hitting the ground. We can’t have chunks of metal randomly falling from the sky!
The solution is a designated area called the Spacecraft Cemetery, located in the Pacific Ocean – the most remote spot from any human civilization. When operators retire these large satellites, they carefully plan their descent so any remaining debris splashes down safely in this isolated area.
Graveyard Orbits
High-altitude satellites that get pushed farther from Earth end up in what’s called a “graveyard orbit” – about 200 miles beyond the farthest active satellites, roughly 22,400 miles above Earth.
These satellites will stay in their graveyard orbits for a very, very long time. As far as our daily lives are concerned, they’re out of the way. But someday in the future, we might need to send “space garbage trucks” to clean them up!
Source: This information comes from NASA Space Place. You can read the original article at: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/spacecraft-graveyard/en/
