means A spacecraft (or other body) designed to travel in orbit around a planet, moon, or other celestial object rather than land on it.

from From the verb "orbit," which traces back to Latin "orbita," meaning a wheel's track or rut — the curved path a wheel cuts into the road. "Orbita" itself comes from "orbis," a ring, disc, or circle. Astronomers borrowed the word for the looping paths of planets and moons, and once the space age arrived, "orbiter" was coined with the agent suffix "-er" — literally "a thing that orbits," a machine that does nothing but trace circles in the dark.