A satellite belonging to multinational service provider Intelsat mysteriously broke up in geostationary orbit over the weekend.

  • Echo Dot
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    5 hours ago

    That’s actually quite impressive because most satellites just don’t do anything when they die. Boeing’s vehicles die with flare, and depressing regularity

    • @yogurt@lemm.ee
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      343 minutes ago

      That’s only because they’re designed with passivation to vent tanks and disconnect batteries to remove sources of explosion when they start to die. If that fails the tanks eventually pop from thermal cycling or the solar panels overcharge the battery until it blows up like a Russian satellite did earlier this year.

    • @Kbobabob@lemmy.world
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      118 minutes ago

      How did it break up? I wasn’t aware that Boeing was determined to be a fault in the build process.

      • @Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world
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        213 minutes ago

        Yeah fair point. Boeing has a degraded reputation these days but at the mo we don’t know why it broke up. Probably never will. I’m kinda going on Occam’s razor here.

  • @lunar17@lemmy.world
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    347 hours ago

    This is slightly concerning. Satellites don’t tend to explode on their own, but it is a Boeing design with a history of leaky propulsion, so who knows?

    • @postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Sure it was a Comm satellite for the world’s tensest area, which is about to go to bigger war.

      who would have ASAT capability at GEO?

      how could it be launched to GEO undetected?

      • @Zron@lemmy.world
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        234 hours ago

        If you’re a government, you can pretty much put anything in a rocket fairing and call it a reconnaissance satellite.

        The only warning that actually has to be given is that a rocket is being launched, so you don’t accidentally trigger WW3 by setting off launch detection satellites without warning. After it’s in space, no one can really tell what was in the fairing. Could be a spy satellite, could be navigation. Could just be a box with a bunch of little rockets in it, designed to slam into whatever you want at ridiculous speed.

        But it’s way more likely that this was just Boeing having a tiny leak in a propellant tank, or a bad thruster and as soon as the concentration of propellant and oxidizer got high enough, it triggered a detonation. They certainly have a history of not leak testing their shit: airplanes falling apart, space capsules with leaky thrusters, and now a blown up satellite point more towards incompetence than malice.

  • @Sam_Bass@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    did you know that high powered lasers are invisible to the naked eye without a sufficient particulate medium to pass through?

    • GHiLA
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      227 hours ago

      Good thing I’m wearing clothes.

  • @Zip2@feddit.uk
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    188 hours ago

    Rapid unscheduled disassembly.

    Plus “Into pieces” is rather unnecessary there.

  • @clutchtwopointzero@lemmy.world
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    3010 hours ago

    Boeing: outsources to an outsourcer who outsources to an outsourcer who outsources to an outsourcer who outsources to an outsourcer and so on and still has the shamelessness of appearing surprised at the shit quality and reliability they deliver

  • Rose56
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    36 hours ago

    I did read about this yesterday, and as far as I know the name of the sat is intelsat 33e and its for communication purposes. I’m curious to know what really happen, how it broke.