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Orbital decay is a gradual decrease of the distance between two orbiting bodies at their closest approach (the periapsis) over many orbital periods. These orbiting bodies can be a planet and its satellite , a star and any object orbiting it, or components of any binary system .
The sensors deteriorate over time, and corrections are necessary for satellite drift and orbital decay. Particularly large differences between reconstructed temperature series occur at the few times when there is little temporal overlap between successive satellites, making intercalibration difficult.
The orbital period is decreasing at 2.373 × 10 −11 seconds per second giving a characteristic timescale of 210,000 years. [1] This decay is mostly due to the emission of gravitational waves, however 7% of the decay could be due to tidal losses. [1] The decay is predicted to go for 130,000 years when the orbital period should reach 5 minutes.
[2] [10] [11] [12] The ratio of observed to predicted rate of orbital decay is calculated to be 0.997 ± 0.002. [12] The total power of the gravitational waves emitted by this system presently is calculated to be 7.35 × 10 24 watts. For comparison, this is 1.9% of the power radiated in light by the Sun.
Simplified Deep Space Perturbations (SDP) models apply to objects with an orbital period greater than 225 minutes, which corresponds to an altitude of 5,877.5 km, assuming a circular orbit. [ 3 ] The SGP4 and SDP4 models were published along with sample code in FORTRAN IV in 1988 with refinements over the original model to handle the larger ...
The minimum orbital altitude is determined by the estimated time it would take for the fission products to decay to the radioactivity level present at launch. In the case of the DRACO reactor, that is about 300 years, which requires an orbit above about 700 km if the orbital decay time is to exceed that value. [24]
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The planet's orbital period appears to be decreasing at a rate of 7.33 ± 0.71 milliseconds per year, suggesting that its orbit is decaying, with a decay timescale of 15.77 ± 1.57 million years. The anomalously high rate of orbital decay of WASP-4b is poorly understood as of 2021.