deorbit

present singular third person deorbits · participle present deorbiting · participle past deorbited · past deorbited

1. transitivespace flightTo cause to leave orbit.

   1996, DIANE Publishing Company, Intelligence Threat Handbook The principal improvements in the systems are the ability to return film canisters without deorbiting the spacecraft, and the extension of orbital […]

   2 more examples

   First, an orbiting weapon required elaborate spacecraft systems, such as retro-rockets to deorbit it, others to guide it, and still others to arm it.

   1998, Curtis Peebles, High Frontier: The U.S. Air Force & the Military Space Program - Page 59

   […] process will be initiated and over approximately one year the satellites will be maneuvered into an orbit that will eventually safely deorbit them.

   2007, U.S. Government, Proposed fiscal year 2008 budget request for the Department of the Interior ... - Page 83

2. intransitivespace flightOf an orbiting object, such as a satellite: to leave orbit.

   Vostok 3 deorbited first, at 09.24 MT on 15 August, followed six minutes later by Vostok 4.

   2001, Rex Hall, David Shayler, The Rocket Men: Vostok & Voskhod, the First Soviet Manned Spaceflights, page 192

   2 more examples

   The Gemini emergency occurred when Gemini 8 deorbited and landed in the Northern Pacific 1000 miles south of Japan.

   1986, Gloria W. Heath, ed., Space Safety and Rescue, 1984-1985: Proceedings of Symposia, page 62

   Viktor is a friend of mine," she says. "He tells me that he has had strange dreams since Mir deorbited."

   2002, Dan Simmons, “The End of Gravity”, in Worlds Enough & Time: Five Tales of Speculative Fiction, page 251

plural deorbits

1. space flightThe act or process of leaving orbit.