FALCON 9 R/B

FALCON 9 R/B is a spent rocket body associated with United States, launched on 2017-07-05 from Cape Canaveral, Florida on the Intelsat IS-35e launch. It orbits in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at altitudes between 198 km and 38,752 km with an inclination of 25.1°. It travels at approximately 14,138 km/h (3.93 km/s), completing one full orbit every 11 hours 29 minutes — that’s roughly 2.09 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.7458 gives it a noticeably elliptical path, with significant altitude variation between perigee and apogee. Spent rocket bodies like FALCON 9 R/B are among the largest pieces of uncontrolled space debris and are priority targets for collision avoidance manoeuvres and future active debris removal efforts.

FALCON 9 R/B orbits at an average altitude of 19,475 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. With an inclination of 25.1°, FALCON 9 R/B passes over latitudes between 25.1°N and 25.1°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 12,511 active satellites in total.