deorbit

The act or process of leaving orbit.

Noun

From de- + orbit.

To 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 […]
- 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...
- […] 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...
Of an orbiting object, such as a satellite: to leave orbit.
- 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
- 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:
- 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: