ECHOSTAR 1 PKM

ECHOSTAR 1 PKM is a spent rocket body associated with China, launched on 1995-12-28 from Xichang, China on the Echostar 1 launch. With over 31 years in orbit, it has far exceeded many satellites’ design lifetimes. It orbits in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at altitudes between 206 km and 16,733 km with an inclination of 24.2°. It travels at approximately 18,657 km/h (5.18 km/s), completing one full orbit every 5 hours — that’s roughly 4.80 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.5568 gives it a noticeably elliptical path, with significant altitude variation between perigee and apogee. Spent rocket bodies like ECHOSTAR 1 PKM are among the largest pieces of uncontrolled space debris and are priority targets for collision avoidance manoeuvres and future active debris removal efforts.

ECHOSTAR 1 PKM orbits at an average altitude of 8,470 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 ECHOSTAR 1 PKM’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 24.2°, ECHOSTAR 1 PKM passes over latitudes between 24.2°N and 24.2°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. China operates approximately 1,221 active satellites in total.