FALCON 9 R/B

FALCON 9 R/B is a spent rocket body associated with United States, launched on 2016-06-15 from Cape Canaveral, Florida on the ABS-2/Eutelsat 117WB launch. After 10 years in orbit, it continues to be tracked by global surveillance networks. It orbits in Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) at altitudes between 290 km and 52,633 km with an inclination of 23.6°. It travels at approximately 12,544 km/h (3.48 km/s), completing one full orbit every 16 hours 27 minutes — that’s roughly 1.46 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.7971 gives it a noticeably elliptical path, with significant altitude variation between perigee and apogee. Spent rocket bodies like FALCON 9 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.

FALCON 9 R/B follows a Highly Elliptical Orbit, sweeping between 290 km (perigee) and 52,633 km (apogee). It spends most of its 16 hours 27 minutes orbital period near apogee, effectively loitering over a region of interest before rapidly sweeping through perigee — a profile used for high-latitude communications (Molniya orbits), early-warning systems and magnetospheric science. Within ±50 km of FALCON 9 R/B’s average altitude, there are currently 0 active payloads and 5 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 23.6°, FALCON 9 R/B passes over latitudes between 23.6°N and 23.6°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.