Suborbital

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A suborbital bone.
  2. 2
    A portion of an orbital.
Adjective
  1. 1
    Not reaching orbit; having a trajectory that does not reach orbital velocity and so must return to ground eventually. not-comparable

    "The first rocket test was suborbital; it didn't even get off the ground but rather exploded on the launchpad."

  2. 2
    Below the orbit of the eye. not-comparable
Adjective
  1. 1
    situated on or below the floor of the eye socket wordnet
  2. 2
    having or involving a trajectory of less than one orbit wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
infraorbitalsubocularsuborbitary

Example

More examples

"On December 22, 1960, soviet scientists attempted to launch Damka ("Little Lady") and Krasavka ("Beauty") on a Korabl Sputnik. However, the upper rocket stage failed and the launch was aborted. The dogs were safely recovered after their unplanned suborbital flight."

Etymology

From sub- + orbital.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.