On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, Paul J Henney wrote:
> I am a little confused about the sataus of the BRIZ 3 stage from Sundays
> ROCKOT launch..the website says that the stage was to carry out a deorbit
> burn about 100 mins into the flight.
> Did this happen or is the stage still in orbit?
I had an exchange of e-mails with EUROCKOT on this very subject yesterday
(Monday) because the web site does say that the Briz-KM stage is to
perform a "complete de-orbit", and of course it is still in orbit.
The reply was the "de-orbit" now seems to mean not to bring out of orbit
to re-entry/landing but simply to remove from the operating orbit, and it
is in this sense that Briz-KM was "de-orbited". I have suggested to
EUROCKOT that they might like to word their announcements more precisely
in future because in more than 40 years of following and writing about
spaceflight "de-orbit" has implied atmospheric re-entry, etc.
I would seem that a similar abuse of the "de-orbit" term is used got GEO
satellites. When removed from the GEO band - either up or down - they
are "de-orbited".
Perhaps I am just old-fashioned and too pedantic ......
Phillip Clark
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