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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 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]
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.
[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.
The orbital decay and the speedup of the orbital period was tested to follow the quadrupole formula with a great precision of 0.013% mainly because of the unique characteristics of the system which has two pulsars, is nearby and possesses an inclination close to 90°. [7] [8] [9]
Due to the amount of time needed to make the changes, and the limited time Salyut 3 had left in orbit due to orbital decay, the next planned mission to the station was cancelled. [15] The spacecraft which would have been used on the third mission to Salyut 3 was later used for the mission Soyuz 20 to Salyut 4 (a civilian space station). [15]
On January 12, 2001, a PAM-D module re-entered the atmosphere after a "catastrophic orbital decay". [3] The PAM-D stage, which had been used to launch the GPS satellite 2A-11 in 1993, crashed in the sparsely populated Saudi Arabian desert, where it was positively identified.
In April 2010, only five years into a planned 15-year mission, its operator, Intelsat, lost control of the satellite and it drifted out of its orbital slot. Several months later, on December 27, 2010, the satellite rebooted itself and began responding to commands again. [5] Intelsat re-positioned it back to its original orbital slot in April 2011.