deorbit
deorbit verb: to cause to leave orbit.
Verb
deorbit (third-person singular simple present deorbits, present participle deorbiting, simple past and past participle deorbited)
- To cause to leave orbit.
- The principal improvements in the systems are the ability to return film canisters without deorbiting the spacecraft, and the extension of orbital […]1996, DIANE Publishing Company, Intelligence Threat Handbook
- 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 Military Space Program - Page 59
- 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
Noun
deorbit (plural deorbits)
- The act or process of leaving orbit.
Examples of deorbit in a sentence
- […] 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 for the Department of the Interior ... - Page 83
- "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:
Forms of deorbit
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | deorbits |
| present participle | deorbiting |
| past participle | deorbited |
| past | deorbited |
| Noun | |
| plural | deorbits |
Origin of deorbit
From de- + orbit.
Words formed from deorbit
Phrases with deorbit
Questions about deorbit
- What does deorbit mean?
- Deorbit means to cause to leave orbit.
- How do you use deorbit in a sentence?
- […] process will be initiated and over approximately one year the satellites will be maneuvered into an orbit that will eventually safely deorbit them.
- What part of speech is deorbit?
- Deorbit can be a verb or a noun.
- What is the past tense of deorbit?
- The past tense of deorbit is deorbited.
Words near deorbit in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: deorbit (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “deorbit.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deorbit. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.