FALCON 9 R/B

FALCON 9 R/B is a spent rocket body associated with United States, launched on 2024-01-03 from Cape Canaveral, Florida on the Ovzon-3 launch. It orbits in Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) at altitudes between 310 km and 45,218 km with an inclination of 27.0°. It travels at approximately 13,316 km/h (3.70 km/s), completing one full orbit every 13 hours 45 minutes — that’s roughly 1.75 orbits per day. Its orbital eccentricity of 0.7707 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 310 km (perigee) and 45,218 km (apogee). It spends most of its 13 hours 45 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 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 27.0°, FALCON 9 R/B passes over latitudes between 27.0°N and 27.0°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.