What is EOL disposal?
End-of-life (EOL) disposal is the planned and executed removal of a satellite from its operational orbit when the spacecraft's mission ends — either through propellant exhaustion, hardware failure, or a deliberate business or technical decision to retire the satellite. Proper EOL disposal is the single most important debris mitigation measure because it prevents a satellite from becoming a long-lived uncontrolled object that poses collision risk to future spacecraft.
LEO disposal
For LEO satellites, the FCC's 2022 rule (and comparable IADC guidelines) requires post-mission disposal within 5 years. At 550 km, natural atmospheric drag decays the orbit in approximately 5 years without any active manoeuvres — making compliance straightforward for operators who design satellites to passivate safely at decommission. At 800 km, natural decay takes 50+ years; at 1,200 km (OneWeb's altitude), over 100 years — requiring active deorbit burns. Satellites must be designed with sufficient propellant reserves to execute a deorbit burn to lower perigee below the altitude where 5-year natural decay is achievable (approximately 600 km).
GEO disposal
Deorbiting a GEO satellite to atmospheric re-entry would require approximately 1.5 km/s of delta-v — far more than is available at end of life. Instead, GEO satellites are 'graveyard boosted': a final apogee raise of approximately 300 km above GEO altitude (to approximately 36,050 km) using residual propellant. In the graveyard orbit, the satellite is far enough above the operational GEO arc to avoid interfering with active satellites, and the very long natural lifetime (hundreds of thousands of years at that altitude) is accepted as the unavoidable residue of GEO operations. Before graveyard manoeuvre, all stored energy sources must be passivated to prevent on-orbit explosions.