FALCON HEAVY R/B

FALCON HEAVY R/B is a spent rocket body associated with United States, launched on 2019-06-25 from Cape Canaveral, Florida on the STP-2 launch. It orbits in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at altitudes between 5,443 km and 11,941 km with an inclination of 42.2°. It travels at approximately 18,519 km/h (5.14 km/s), completing one full orbit every 5 hours 7 minutes — that’s roughly 4.69 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.2157 gives it a noticeably elliptical path, with significant altitude variation between perigee and apogee. Spent rocket bodies like FALCON HEAVY 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 HEAVY R/B orbits at an average altitude of 8,692 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 HEAVY R/B’s average altitude, there are currently 1 active payload and 12 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 42.2°, FALCON HEAVY R/B passes over latitudes between 42.2°N and 42.2°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 12,413 active satellites in total.