orbit

According to the European Space Agency, there are more than 46,000 pieces of debris weighing a total of 17,000 tonnes currently in orbit.

From Barron's ● Aug. 7, 2026

This hypothetical scenario is called Kessler Syndrome, but I propose renaming it Tesla Syndrome, given that Elon Musk’s Starlink has nearly 11,000 satellites in orbit, with eventual plans to launch as many as 42,000.

From Salon ● Aug. 6, 2026

This Falcon 9 was in orbit since January last year, when it blasted off from Florida.

From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2026

His wife, Linda, is equally neighborly, hosting regular chat sessions on their lovely front porch and checking in on me whenever I have been ill, as she does to anyone in her orbit.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026

Dad is great, but he’s an inventor and he’d probably tune out while he sketched gigantic catapults and estimated the tensile strength required for a bungee cord to send a one-man glider into orbit.

From "Lawn Boy Returns" by Gary Paulsen

During the mission, they completed 3,856 orbits of Earth and traveled more than 102 million miles.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 27, 2026

For instance, G 203-47's red dwarf rotates once every 100 or so days, but orbits its white dwarf every 14.9 days, meaning they are not tidally synced.

From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2026

The company projects Starship will begin launching to lower-Earth orbits in the second half of this year, but it isn’t clear when the company could get its rockets to the orbits required by StormWall.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026

This drags on the observatory and slows it down as it orbits the Earth, lowering its altitude.

From BBC ● Jul. 3, 2026

Unlike the orbits of Mercury and Mars, the orbits of the other planets depart so little from circularity that we cannot make out their true shapes even in an extremely accurate diagram.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

Back in 1968, Apollo 8 orbited the Moon 10 times without landing.

From Barron's ● Apr. 7, 2026

Among the many faulty narratives that orbited out of the government, one asked us to consider the mental anguish suffered by these dispatched officers.

From Slate ● Feb. 12, 2026

The Sentinel-1 satellites that Peter uses orbited over Halley Bay, taking pictures of the ice sheet.

From BBC ● Sep. 27, 2024

"As with other stars orbited by exoplanets, the observed light curve of WASP-39 is flatter than previous models can explain," she adds.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 12, 2024

DVDs and cases orbited in a ring around it, mostly Farsi-language dubs of Bollywood movies.

From "Darius the Great Is Not Okay" by Adib Khorram

There are currently 14,000 satellites orbiting Earth, with some 1.7 million satellites planned in coming years.

From Barron's ● Aug. 7, 2026

While smaller space rocks frequently burn up in Earth's atmosphere, large orbiting rocks like asteroids are rarer.

From Barron's ● Aug. 7, 2026

Indeed, it’s difficult to estimate how space junk is currently orbiting our planet.

From Salon ● Aug. 6, 2026

Previous research has identified rocky planets orbiting within the habitable zones of their stars.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 21, 2026

The picture that nearly everybody has in mind of an atom is of an electron or two flying around a nucleus, like planets orbiting a sun.

From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson