ARIANE 42L R/B

ARIANE 42L R/B is a spent rocket body associated with France, launched on 2002-01-23 from Guiana Space Centre, Kourou on the Insat 3C launch. With over 24 years in orbit, it has far exceeded many satellites’ design lifetimes. It orbits in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at altitudes between 461 km and 36,386 km with an inclination of 3.9°. It travels at approximately 14,434 km/h (4.01 km/s), completing one full orbit every 10 hours 48 minutes — that’s roughly 2.22 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.7245 gives it a noticeably elliptical path, with significant altitude variation between perigee and apogee. Spent rocket bodies like ARIANE 42L 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.

ARIANE 42L R/B orbits at an average altitude of 18,424 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 ARIANE 42L R/B’s average altitude, there are currently 0 active payloads and 21 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 3.9°, ARIANE 42L R/B passes over latitudes between 3.9°N and 3.9°S, concentrating coverage over equatorial and near-equatorial regions. Low-inclination orbits maximise revisit rates over specific tropical zones. France operates approximately 115 active satellites in total.