BREEZE-KM R/B

BREEZE-KM R/B is a spent rocket body associated with Russia (CIS), launched on 2019-12-26 from PKMTR on the Gonets-M No. 24/25/26 launch. It orbits in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at altitudes between 1,174 km and 1,511 km with an inclination of 82.5°. It travels at approximately 25,879 km/h (7.19 km/s), completing one full orbit every 113 minutes — that’s roughly 12.80 orbits per day. At its current altitude, the estimated orbital lifetime before atmospheric re-entry is thousands of years. Spent rocket bodies like BREEZE-KM 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.

BREEZE-KM R/B orbits at an average altitude of 1,343 km in the uppermost reaches of Low Earth Orbit. At this altitude, orbital decay is effectively zero without active deorbiting, and coverage footprints are significantly larger than lower LEO, though at the cost of higher latency. Within ±50 km of BREEZE-KM R/B’s average altitude, there are currently 12 active payloads and 150 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 82.5°, BREEZE-KM R/B passes over latitudes between 82.5°N and 82.5°S, providing near-global coverage including the polar regions. Polar and near-polar orbits are used for reconnaissance, weather monitoring and Earth-observation missions that need to image every part of the planet. Russia (CIS) operates approximately 1,286 active satellites in total.