drag free satellites on sat may gmt henry zoo toronto edu henry spencer said no a dragless satellite does not magically have no drag it burns fuel constantly to fight drag maintaining the exact orbit it would have if there was no drag well almost it turns out that clever orbital mechanics can engineer things so that resonant interactions with the higher order harmonics of the earth s gravitational field can pump energy into a satellite and keep it from experiencing drag effects for periods of months to years my favorite example of this is the soviet russian heavy elint satellites of the cosmos class which are in resonance in particular c has undergone two periods of prolonged gain in altitude the current one having started in june the mean altitude of the satellite is now as high as it has ever been since launch on march looking at the elements for c also shows the limitations of norad s software but that s another story this probably has little relevance to space stations since the degree orbits of the c satellites are at km which is unacceptably far into the inner van allen belt for manned platforms but it s kind of interesting from the point of view of the physics of the situation orbital elements for these satellites are available on request allen thomson saic mclean va is there an opinion here if so it s mine not saic s
