ARIANE 5 R/B

ARIANE 5 R/B is a spent rocket body associated with France, launched on 2022-09-07 from Guiana Space Centre, French Guiana on the Eutelsat Konnect VHTS launch. It orbits in Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) at altitudes between 232 km and 42,841 km with an inclination of 4.3°. It travels at approximately 13,605 km/h (3.78 km/s), completing one full orbit every 12 hours 54 minutes — that’s roughly 1.86 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.7634 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 follows a Highly Elliptical Orbit, sweeping between 232 km (perigee) and 42,841 km (apogee). It spends most of its 12 hours 54 minutes orbital period near apogee, effectively loitering over a region of interest before rapidly sweeping through perigee — a profile used for high-latitude communications (Molniya orbits), early-warning systems and magnetospheric science. Within ±50 km of ARIANE 5 R/B’s average altitude, there are currently 36 active payloads and 10 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 4.3°, ARIANE 5 R/B passes over latitudes between 4.3°N and 4.3°S, concentrating coverage over equatorial and near-equatorial regions. Low-inclination orbits maximise revisit rates over specific tropical zones. France operates approximately 120 active satellites in total.