SCATHA AKM

SCATHA AKM is a spent rocket body associated with United States, launched on 1979-01-30 from Cape Canaveral, Florida on the P78-2 launch. With over 47 years in orbit, it has far exceeded many satellites’ design lifetimes. It orbits in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at altitudes between 28,036 km and 42,804 km with an inclination of 9.6°. It travels at approximately 11,118 km/h (3.09 km/s), completing one full orbit every 23 hours 37 minutes — that’s roughly 1.02 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.1767 gives it a noticeably elliptical path, with significant altitude variation between perigee and apogee. At geostationary altitude, there is no meaningful atmospheric drag — this object will remain in orbit indefinitely unless actively deorbited. Spent rocket bodies like SCATHA AKM are among the largest pieces of uncontrolled space debris and are priority targets for collision avoidance manoeuvres and future active debris removal efforts.

SCATHA AKM orbits at an average altitude of 35,420 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 SCATHA AKM’s average altitude, there are currently 1 active payload and 14 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 9.6°, SCATHA AKM passes over latitudes between 9.6°N and 9.6°S, concentrating coverage over equatorial and near-equatorial regions. Low-inclination orbits maximise revisit rates over specific tropical zones. United States operates approximately 12,413 active satellites in total.