LEASAT 3 PKM

LEASAT 3 PKM is a spent rocket body associated with United States, launched on 1985-04-12 from Cape Canaveral, Florida on the OV-103 PAM deploy launch. With over 41 years in orbit, it has far exceeded many satellites’ design lifetimes. It orbits in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at altitudes between 302 km and 12,238 km with an inclination of 26.9°. It travels at approximately 20,215 km/h (5.62 km/s), completing one full orbit every 3 hours 56 minutes — that’s roughly 6.10 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.4721 gives it a noticeably elliptical path, with significant altitude variation between perigee and apogee. Spent rocket bodies like LEASAT 3 PKM are among the largest pieces of uncontrolled space debris and are priority targets for collision avoidance manoeuvres and future active debris removal efforts.

LEASAT 3 PKM orbits at an average altitude of 6,270 km in Medium Earth Orbit, the region between LEO and GEO (2,000–35,786 km). MEO’s higher altitude gives each satellite a much larger ground footprint than LEO, meaning fewer spacecraft are needed for global coverage — but signal latency is higher and radiation from the Van Allen belts is a significant design constraint. Within ±50 km of LEASAT 3 PKM’s average altitude, there are currently 1 active payload and 3 tracked debris or rocket body fragments. This is a relatively sparse altitude band, containing less than 1% of all active satellites. With an inclination of 26.9°, LEASAT 3 PKM passes over latitudes between 26.9°N and 26.9°S, covering the tropical and temperate zones where most of the world’s population resides. Low-to-mid inclination orbits are efficient to reach from equatorial and mid-latitude launch sites. United States operates approximately 12,858 active satellites in total.