ARIANE 5 R/B

ARIANE 5 R/B is a spent rocket body associated with France, launched on 2018-01-25 from Guiana Space Centre, French Guiana on the SES-14/Al Yah 3 launch. It orbits in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at altitudes between 267 km and 39,320 km with an inclination of 21.6°. It travels at approximately 14,051 km/h (3.90 km/s), completing one full orbit every 11 hours 42 minutes — that’s roughly 2.05 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.7463 gives it a noticeably elliptical path, with significant altitude variation between perigee and apogee. Spent rocket bodies like ARIANE 5 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.

ARIANE 5 R/B orbits at an average altitude of 19,794 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 ARIANE 5 R/B’s average altitude, there are currently 2 active payloads and 17 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 21.6°, ARIANE 5 R/B passes over latitudes between 21.6°N and 21.6°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. France operates approximately 120 active satellites in total.