FALCON 9 R/B

FALCON 9 R/B is a spent rocket body associated with United States, launched on 2023-02-18 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, United States on the Inmarsat 6 F2 launch. It orbits in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at altitudes between 210 km and 33,807 km with an inclination of 26.7°. It travels at approximately 14,865 km/h (4.13 km/s), completing one full orbit every 9 hours 53 minutes — that’s roughly 2.43 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.7185 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 17,009 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 FALCON 9 R/B’s average altitude, there are currently 0 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 26.7°, FALCON 9 R/B passes over latitudes between 26.7°N and 26.7°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 13,202 active satellites in total.