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Re:Space Junk Solution? Tiny Cubesat to Test New De-Orbiting... by WatchDog on Monday July 03, 2017 @01:24AM (#14686028)
My orbital dynamics knowledge is informed almost entirely from kerbal space program, but since the majority of satellites orbit with an eccentricity close to 0, shouldnt it be fairly simple to just do a radial-out burn and crash into the atmosphere, which generally does not require a huge deal of fuel.
Re:Space Junk Solution? Tiny Cubesat to Test New De-Orbiting... by db48x on Monday July 03, 2017 @10:30PM (#14693086)
Radial burns require more fuel than prograde/retrograde, and most satellites don't have enough fuel to deorbit. Geosynchronous satellites usually go to a higher orbit at their end of life, actually, since that's cheapest.