Re:Myanmar's satellite held by Japan on space station due to...
by shkkmo on Friday March 12, 2021 @11:16PM
(#26443910)
As a general rule of thumb, the only way to decrease the energy of an orbit (what most people would consider to be "lowering the orbit"), is to apply acceleration in the opposite direction that the object is traveling.
You may be to do this with atospheric drag if you add enough ellipticity but they would only be lowering the orbit indirectly.
Re:Myanmar's satellite held by Japan on space station due to...
by sigstoat on Saturday March 13, 2021 @12:09AM
(#26444148)
> would only be lowering the orbit indirectly.
you know, in the wildly hypothetical world where this was implemented, i don't think the folks cutting the check would mind if you deorbited things directly, or indirectly.
if you want to lower its orbit, you probably need to take a lot of complicated stuff in to account which doesn't fit into a comment. i won't charge the orbital dynamacists implementing my idea more if they replace "down" with "the optimal direction for this target, at the optimal moment".
mass of the target, cross sectional area of the target, any out gassing it might be doing, where we're trying to maneuver to next, etc, etc.
if the optimal direction ends up being exactly "down" or "back", i'll buy you a beer.