Is remaining in geostationary orbit an active process? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Maybe this should be in Nostupidquestions as I'm aware the moon exists. And I guess there may be an orbit zone where things tend to remain in orbit. But curious...

The full context question is: For man-made satellites, would they benefit by having a "Self destruct" button?

Sure it may add more debris but since an explosion would scatter debris in all directions, anything flung up or down would cause it to get out of this geostationary zone/band.. And hopefully come crashing down to Earth, reducing overall debris? Compared to an abandoned satellite, remaining in orbit and breaking down due to relatively low energy collisions with surrounding debris.

Basically I'm trying to justify self destruct buttons. Thank you!

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[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Cheers for the detailed response! Seems I'll have to scratch the destruct button from my imaginary space station and replace with a simple thruster.

Didn't realise particles shooting away from Earth wouldn't realistically come down again. I'll have to read up more on Orbital mechanics

[-] [email protected] 9 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

https://xkcd.com/1356/

this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025

38 points (95.2% liked)

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