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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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[-] SuDmit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 3 weeks ago

Adding to other's responses, exploding thing at geostationary orbit is especially bad:

  1. there is roughly only one such orbit
  2. because of (a) it is much more limited in terms of amount of spots for satellites distant enough from each other to be considered safe (imagine beads)
  3. because of orbital mechanics destroying things creates cloud of debris that eventually takes up form roughly similar to torus, embedding original orbit, endangering all other satellites here and threatening to start chain reaction of creating more and more debris from collisions
  4. this orbit is quite high and atmosphere here is so miniscule it'd take hundreds and thousands of years for that debris to meaningfully slow down and drop to lower trajectories; and junk that got higher orbits will decay even slower. It's not coincidence that graveyard orbit for geostationary satellites is higher

All in all, don't explode things here

[-] CameronDev@programming.dev 4 points 3 weeks ago

All orbits require very minimal maintenance, the closer to earth, the more maintenance required . Far enough out, and its basically maintence free, except for avoiding other debris.

The problem with an explosive self destruct is that not all debris will go down into lower orbits, some with go higher and therefore take even longer to deorbit. Its also a lot easier to track one dead satellite instead of thousands of minute particles.

And ideal "self-destruct button" would actually be a thruster firing in the direction of travel, which would slow it down and drag it into the earth, or if facing the other way, boost it up to a "graveyard" orbit. Both these exist on many satellites already.

[-] drkt@scribe.disroot.org 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

As an addendum to this comment:
The moon is also a source of orbital pull and does affect everything on the inside of its orbit and is probably the most significant source of disturbance at geostationary distances.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 1 points 3 weeks ago

And ideal “self-destruct button” would actually be a thruster firing in the direction of travel, which would slow it down and drag it into the earth, or if facing the other way, boost it up to a “graveyard” orbit. Both these exist on many satellites already.

Also, even if they don't, it'd be possible to send another spacecraft up that has enough fuel to deorbit the satellite.

[-] button_masher@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Thank you for your response!

Pardon my crappy drawing and simplification.. trying to understand..

  • So Zone 1 requires a lot of maintenance energy
  • Zone 2 may be maintenance free zone
  • Zone 3 may require more energy than Zone 2 but less than Zone 1
  • And finally Zone 4 will be even less energy to stay in orbit but needs more energy to stay in line due to increased travel distance

Is that right?

But yes, there goes my self destruct notion down the drain.

[-] CameronDev@programming.dev 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

There is no orbit altitude that requires more energy to maintain than a lower altitude.

Zone 1 requires more reboosting that 2, which requires more than 3, which requires more than 4. I dont know the exact relationship, (someone else might know), but we can consider it linear for simplification. The further away from earth, there will be less atmospheric drag, which means a longer stable orbit.

The travel distance doesn't really change anything, it doesn't affect the orbit stability.

Think of it like this spring. Your satellite can start at any point, and with no additional energy, Itll follow the path all the way down to the middle (earth). Start low, and itll reach ground quickly, start high, and itll take a lot longer. There is no energy required to stay on the spiral path. Once the sat is low enough, you may want to reboost, which is when you need to use energy to jump up to a higher point on the spiral, at which the path continues.

[-] button_masher@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 weeks ago

That image and your description helped a ton. So there isn't a magic zone but more of a threshold after which things get easier to maintain.

Really should start playing Kerbal Space Program as someone before pointed out. You seem to have a great conceptual model of this. Thank you for engaging 🙂

[-] CameronDev@programming.dev 2 points 3 weeks ago

Not even a threshold, its a much more smooth transition, thats just the best picture I could find.

KSP will definitely help. Chuck your SATs into orbit, and you can see the orbits slowly decay away, almost imperceptibly. Its fun too :)

[-] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 3 weeks ago

Wont you eventually leave orbit if you are too far away?

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 weeks ago

Depends. Do you mean around a conceptual single body in an infinite void, or are there other things out there?

The (circular) orbits in a gravitational well don't end, they just get slower and slower as you move outwards forever. But, in real life you'll be in a zone where other things have just as much pull after a while, and then anything could happen.

[-] Delta_V@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

Sorry to disappoint, but exploding something at GEO would make things worse.

All satellites in orbit of Earth will experience atmospheric drag. Even the Moon is bumping into gas atoms.

Geostationary satellites will eventually fall. It might take millions of years, but eventually the thin atmosphere will slow those satellites down enough that their orbit will fall into the thick, lower atmosphere where they'll burn up or crash into the Earth's surface.

Exploding a satellite up there will just make a shotgun spray of projectiles that will still take millions of years to fall. Assuming the projectiles shoot off in all directions fairly evenly, then the ones that get shot backwards relative to the motion of the satellite will end up in a lower orbit that will decay faster. The pieces that get shot forward might actually escape Earth orbit all together and become little asteroids orbiting the Sun.

The thing that's special about geostationary orbit isn't that the orbit of things at that altitude does not decay. That altitude is special because at that altitude, orbital speed is equal to the Earth's rotational speed. A satellite at that altitude over the equator will remain over that same longitude - it won't rise and set like the Moon, it will remain in the same spot overhead both night and day.

[-] CameronDev@programming.dev 1 points 3 weeks ago

Name checks out :D

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 weeks ago

Hmm, it looks like you need a bit over a kilometer per second to escape Earth from GEO. I guess that's not impossible with high explosives. I don't think any shrapnel would make it back to earth, though, since they'd have to lose most of the 3 km/s

[-] Delta_V@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

Losing ~1.4 km/s at GEO would put a fragment into geostationary transfer orbit, with one side of the elliptical orbit at geostationary altitude and the other side at low orbit altitude where it would experience increased drag.

[-] button_masher@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 weeks 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

[-] Delta_V@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)
[-] TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

This is so dumb it's almost brilliant. If you go to a job, you're working class. If you make rules, you're the ruling class.

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Nope. Orbits are defined as being passive and repeating trajectories.

They're also the default way things move in gravitational well, unless there's a collision or thrust. To be clear, geostationary orbits are way further out than the standard low-Earth orbits, like multiple Earth widths away. So, deorbiting a satellite from there requires a very sustained rocket boost, and if you just blow it up you'll get a slightly wider debris field of junk in random orbits and very little if anything re-entering.

It's a bit of an interesting aside that how easy orbits are to find is important for there being planets in the first place, or even galaxies. A collapsing cloud of dust and gas would end in a lone star or black hole every time, if some of the infalling matter didn't get "stuck".

When possible, deorbiting for safety is a standard thing, though. At least now that we worry about too much space junk; the Apollo engineers weren't thinking about it yet. It's always done by thrusting into the atmosphere.

Edit: And for geosynchronous satellites, they actually just move into a slightly higher graveyard orbit so they're at least out of the way.

this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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