BREEZE-M R/B

BREEZE-M R/B is a spent rocket body associated with Russia (CIS), launched on 2017-06-08 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan on the Echostar 21 launch. It orbits in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at altitudes between 1,702 km and 34,545 km with an inclination of 30.4°. It travels at approximately 14,522 km/h (4.03 km/s), completing one full orbit every 10 hours 36 minutes — that’s roughly 2.26 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.6704 gives it a noticeably elliptical path, with significant altitude variation between perigee and apogee. Spent rocket bodies like BREEZE-M 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.

BREEZE-M R/B orbits at an average altitude of 18,124 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 BREEZE-M R/B’s average altitude, there are currently 2 active payloads and 23 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 30.4°, BREEZE-M R/B passes over latitudes between 30.4°N and 30.4°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. Russia (CIS) operates approximately 1,286 active satellites in total.