OPTUS A2 R/B(PAM-D)

OPTUS A2 R/B(PAM-D) is a spent rocket body associated with United States, launched on 1985-11-27 from Cape Canaveral, Florida on the OV-104 PAM deploy launch. With over 41 years in orbit, it has far exceeded many satellites’ design lifetimes. It orbits in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at altitudes between 387 km and 34,099 km with an inclination of 25.8°. It travels at approximately 14,791 km/h (4.11 km/s), completing one full orbit every 10 hours 2 minutes — that’s roughly 2.39 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.7138 gives it a noticeably elliptical path, with significant altitude variation between perigee and apogee. Spent rocket bodies like OPTUS A2 R/B(PAM-D) are among the largest pieces of uncontrolled space debris and are priority targets for collision avoidance manoeuvres and future active debris removal efforts.

OPTUS A2 R/B(PAM-D) orbits at an average altitude of 17,243 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 OPTUS A2 R/B(PAM-D)’s average altitude, there are currently 0 active payloads and 11 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 25.8°, OPTUS A2 R/B(PAM-D) passes over latitudes between 25.8°N and 25.8°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.