Testing the safety of decommissioned spacecraft above GEO Original Research Article

The safety of equatorial and inclined super-geostationary orbits was tested on the time span of 100 years. The results indicate, that orbits with initial inclinations higher than 15° may experience a rapid growth of eccentricity, re-entering the GEO belt. The dynamics of these objects is determined by direct lunisolar perturbations which were not fully accounted for in the GEO-based IADC recommendations for the minimum perigee altitude of a decommissioned spacecraft.