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Left all alone, any man-made satellite with any part of its orbit within a couple hundred miles of the surface will eventually drop out of orbit and burn up in the atmosphere, because it gradually loses energy plowing through the tenuous atmosphere even at that altitude. The International Space Station, at about 240 miles above the surface, loses several miles of orbital altitude every month, and has to have a bump from its onboard thrusters to restore the desired orbit. The process can be hastened with a bump from onboard thrusters that's timed just right so as to reduce the minimum point of the orbit to a low altitude, well into a more dense portion of the atmosphere. The atmosphere itself then does the rest of the job, robbing the satellite of so much kinetic energy that it can no longer maintain orbit. Technically, there's another answer to the question: If the satellite is boosted into a state of higher energy, so that it assumes a solar orbit, or leaves the solar system entirely, that maneuver would also be considered as having removed the satellite from earth orbit.

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