USA 67 R/B(2)

USA 67 R/B(2) is a spent rocket body associated with United States, launched on 1990-11-15 from Cape Canaveral, Florida on the OV-104 Medium dep launch. With over 36 years in orbit, it has far exceeded many satellites’ design lifetimes. It orbits in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at altitudes between 136 km and 3,476 km with an inclination of 24.8°. It travels at approximately 25,135 km/h (6.98 km/s), completing one full orbit every 2 hours 3 minutes — that’s roughly 11.73 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.2042 gives it a noticeably elliptical path, with significant altitude variation between perigee and apogee. At its current altitude, the estimated orbital lifetime before atmospheric re-entry is thousands of years. Spent rocket bodies like USA 67 R/B(2) are among the largest pieces of uncontrolled space debris and are priority targets for collision avoidance manoeuvres and future active debris removal efforts.

USA 67 R/B(2) orbits at an average altitude of 1,806 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 USA 67 R/B(2)’s average altitude, there are currently 5 active payloads and 30 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 24.8°, USA 67 R/B(2) passes over latitudes between 24.8°N and 24.8°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.