Objects in Orbit
Two things:
1) Could we add a new topic to the "Craft" section for questions about character, plot, science, etc of a story? Not just a sounding board for story ideas, but for questions about a particular story. That's what this post is.
2) Does anyone know if their are standard orbits for space junk/objects? I do know there are certain orbits for the space station, satelites, and things like that, but what about the jettisoned debris that does not burn up in the atmosphere, instead finding a permanent orbit around a planet? Are their certain distances from the planet that are more prone to attracting "debris bands" Or is it completely random?
I haven't found out anything significant through my own searches, though my research has been minimal.
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Re:Objects in Orbit
(1) I am reluctant to add more topics because it dilutes the ones we already have, which people are mostly not using anyway.
(2) There are no specific orbits for anything, as far as I know. Your orbit around a body depends on only your speed and its gravitational pull.
The only exception is geostationary. If you want your satellite to orbit at the same speed as the rotation of the Earth, that means you have to be at a specific distance from the Earth's surface. Other than that, anything goes.
Note that all orbits are ellipses. The ellipse can be nearly a circle, as per the moon, or seriously flattened, as per a comet. Pluto's orbit is more flat than any other planet and overlaps that of Neptune, which means sometimes it is closer to the sun than Neptune and other times it is further away. Pluto is also smaller than our moon. Many people believe Pluto is actually a captured asteroid or comet and not a "real" planet, although Pluto has a moon of its own which IMO complicates things.
Halley's Comet orbits the sun, but its orbit is so flattened that it scoots in and out of our visible range every 75 years. There are other comets with periods much longer.
So... your orbits can be close, far away, flat, almost circular, etc.
As for space junk, it tends to match the orbit of whatever dropped it. Supposedly there is an astronaut's glove orbiting the Earth, and it would be in basically the same orbit as the astronaut. If the junk isn't going fast enough, it eventually falls to Earth, or if it is going too fast, it flies off into space.
In the early days, when they deployed a satellite they used to just let the extra crap float around, but now they (so I've heard) try to decelerate it so it falls to Earth and burns up. On Space Station Freedom they actually collect most of it and return it in the space shuttle, which as apparently caused a backup of trash because the shuttles haven't been coming, and the Soyuz rockets don't have enough capacity to carry away all the trash.
So space junk should be a thing of the past... except for the occasional lost glove.
I'm not a complete idiot -- some parts are missing.