TIL that objects re-entering the atmosphere vary considerably in their initial velocities, and that ones from further out (e.g. lunar visits) tend to be much faster than those from LEO. It’s not intuitively surprising, but I’d assumed that given the “narrow window” used for re-entry, all objects needed to dump enough velocity to arrive in a fairly tight band.
TIL that objects re-entering the atmosphere vary considerably in their initial velocities, and that ones from further out (e.g. lunar visits) tend to be much faster than those from LEO. It’s not intuitively surprising, but I’d assumed that given the “narrow window” used for re-entry, all objects needed to dump enough velocity to arrive in a fairly tight band.