Orbital shell (spaceflight)
In spaceflight, an orbital shell is a set of artificial satellites in circular orbits at a certain fixed altitude.In the design of satellite constellations, an orbital shell usually refers to a collection of circular orbits with the same altitude and, oftentimes, orbital inclination,
distributed evenly in celestial longitude.
For a sufficiently high inclination and altitude the orbital shell covers the entire orbited body. In other cases the coverage extends up to a certain maximum latitude.
Several existing satellite constellations typically use a single orbital shell. New large megaconstellations have been proposed that consist of multiple orbital shells.List of orbital shells
| Orbital altitude | Inclination | Planes | Satellites | Name |
| 550 | 53° | ~10
72 | ~360
1584 | Starlink |
| 781 | 86.4° | 6 | 66 | Iridium |
| 19,130 | 64°8' | 3 | 24 | GLONASS |
| 20,180 | 55° | 6 | 24 | GPS |
| 21,150 | 55° | 3 | 24 | BeiDou |
| 23,222 | 56° | 3 | 24 | Galileo |
