ARIANE 5 R/B

ARIANE 5 R/B is a spent rocket body associated with France, launched on 2021-10-24 from Guiana Space Centre, Kourou on the SES-17/Syracuse 4A launch. It orbits in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at altitudes between 209 km and 32,332 km with an inclination of 5.5°. It travels at approximately 15,105 km/h (4.20 km/s), completing one full orbit every 9 hours 25 minutes — that’s roughly 2.55 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.7094 gives it a noticeably elliptical path, with significant altitude variation between perigee and apogee. Spent rocket bodies like ARIANE 5 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 5 R/B orbits at an average altitude of 16,271 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 5 R/B’s average altitude, there are currently 0 active payloads and 4 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 5.5°, ARIANE 5 R/B passes over latitudes between 5.5°N and 5.5°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.