SATCOM K2 R/B(PAM-D2)

SATCOM K2 R/B(PAM-D2) 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 356 km and 33,689 km with an inclination of 26.8°. It travels at approximately 14,860 km/h (4.13 km/s), completing one full orbit every 9 hours 54 minutes — that’s roughly 2.43 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.7124 gives it a noticeably elliptical path, with significant altitude variation between perigee and apogee. Spent rocket bodies like SATCOM K2 R/B(PAM-D2) are among the largest pieces of uncontrolled space debris and are priority targets for collision avoidance manoeuvres and future active debris removal efforts.

SATCOM K2 R/B(PAM-D2) orbits at an average altitude of 17,023 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 SATCOM K2 R/B(PAM-D2)’s average altitude, there are currently 0 active payloads and 8 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 26.8°, SATCOM K2 R/B(PAM-D2) passes over latitudes between 26.8°N and 26.8°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.