ViralTopic

Kaplan-Meier satellite decay analysis

April 5, 2026Jonathan McDowell

Jonathan McDowell shares a statistical analysis estimating satellite orbital lifetimes without reboost, using 69 years of data and bins by altitude.

Today's calculation: how long does a satellite in a circular orbit stay up when it stops all reboost burns?
let's average over all of that and do a Kaplan-Meier analysis
on 69 years of actual data.
Jonathan McDowell
analysisorbits

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