What is maximum orbit altitude for Earth?

[Pawelk198604]

What is maximum orbit altitude for Earth?

[Javster]

The Earth's SoI extends to 925x10^3KM, so I assume the higest orbit would be just below that.

[Vanamonde]

Javster's sense of humor aside, the only limit would be interference from other celestial bodies, and that would depend on the plane of the orbit. What exactly did you have in mind, Pawelk198604?

[K^2]

Javster's sense of humor aside, the only limit would be interference from other celestial bodies, and that would depend on the plane of the orbit. What exactly did you have in mind, Pawelk198604?

Mostly just one celestial body. The Sun. And that's precisely what determines SoI which Javster quoted.

[einsteiner]

Anything in orbit that high and "loose" is going to get a lot of perturbations from the Moon too. I wouldn't bet on something staying there for long.

[linkxsc]

Probably the closest to a "high" orbit over earth that you could assume would be either sitting in an earth-moon Lagrange point, or an earth-sun Lagrange point. While technically not in "orbit" they are places far enough from earth where you'd be able to sit in roughly the same area.

[WestAir]

Venus is the closest celestial body, Luna notwithstanding, that can capture an orbiting vessel, correct? Then it should be the point where Venus and Earth have the same pull on an object at their closest distance.

That's my uneducated guess. I imagine you could go against the Galactic plane and orbit high, instead of around the equator, but I'm not sure if such an orbit will "rotate" with the Earth as it orbits the sun, or if it'll keep put and eventually put such an orbit in the path of Venus' SOI.

[K^2]

Venus is the closest celestial body, Luna notwithstanding, that can capture an orbiting vessel, correct? Then it should be the point where Venus and Earth have the same pull on an object at their closest distance.

"Nearest" isn't the factor. It's about the strongest pull, and Sun's pull becomes dominant much sooner.

[cantab]

"Detailed numerical calculations show that orbits at or just within the Hill sphere are not stable in the long term; it appears that stable satellite orbits exist only inside 1/2 to 1/3 of the Hill radius. The region of stability for retrograde orbits at a large distance from the primary, is larger than the region for prograde orbits at a large distance from the primary." - Wikipedia

For Earth the Hill sphere is about 1.5 million km, so an orbit of radius 500-750 thousand km would be stable.

[AngelLestat]

Depends what you might call a "stable orbit".

Somethings that you can last 100 years or billion years?

[lajoswinkler]

Earth's SOI isn't a sphere. It's an uneven spheroid, and fluctuates due to the Moon and the Sun. One would have to search for the highest longterm stable orbit.

[Javster]

Javster's sense of humor aside, the only limit would be interference from other celestial bodies, and that would depend on the plane of the orbit. What exactly did you have in mind, Pawelk198604?

What do you mean, sense of humour? I was being serious! What have I said that's wrong?

Seriously, what are you on about??

Edited August 25, 2014 by Javster

[cantab]

Depends what you might call a "stable orbit".

Somethings that you can last 100 years or billion years?

Fair point. 50 million years would be a reasonable figure, corresponding to the solar system's Lyapunov time - the time for which we can predict the positions of the planets.