International Space Station program ocean was found to be possible only with Russia's assistance. At the time ISS was launched, the Russian Space Agency had experience from de-orbiting the Salyut 4, 5, 6, and 7 space stations, while NASA's first intentional controlled de-orbit of a satellite (the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory) would not occur for another two years. NASA currently has no spacecraft capable of de-orbiting the ISS at the time of decommissioning. Skylab, the only space station built and launched entirely by the US, decayed from orbit slowly over 5 years, and no attempt was made to de-orbit the station using a deorbital
Space debris satellite was struck by an unknown object and rendered inoperable; its engineers had enough contact time with the satellite to send it into a graveyard orbit. In 1958, the United States launched Vanguard I into a medium Earth orbit (MEO). , it, and the upper stage of its launch rocket, are the oldest surviving man-made space objects still in orbit. In a catalog of known launches until July 2009, the Union of Concerned Scientists listed 902 operational satellites from a known population of 19,000 large objects and about 30,000 objects launched. An example of additional dead satellite debris are the