• ieatpillowtags@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      All low earth orbits are decaying without periodic adjustments. If you disable a satellite, it will eventually burn up in the atmosphere.

      • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        9 months ago

        Some orbits are quicker than others. Cloudsat was recently retired, and was lowered to a graveyard orbit which decays a lot more quickly. As I understand it, our collective space programs have made a bit of a mess of operational orbits and we need to think about cleaning up debris while also mitigating any future additions to the debris field.

    • maynarkh@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      9 months ago

      Or, hear me out, nukes. Explode a nuke far away enough that the shockwave doesn’t matter (not like it matters much in space anyway) and use the EMP to knock the satellite out.

      Nukes solve a lot of problems.