FALCON 9 R/B

FALCON 9 R/B is a spent rocket body associated with United States, launched on 2020-12-13 from Cape Canaveral, Florida on the SXM-7 launch. It orbits in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at altitudes between 257 km and 10,755 km with an inclination of 27.0°. It travels at approximately 20,855 km/h (5.79 km/s), completing one full orbit every 3 hours 35 minutes — that’s roughly 6.70 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.4419 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 5,506 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 4 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 27.0°, FALCON 9 R/B passes over latitudes between 27.0°N and 27.0°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.