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Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit

(spacenews.com)
157 points milgrim | 1 comments | 21 Oct 24 14:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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nordsieck ◴[21 Oct 24 14:28 UTC] No.41904557[source]▶
It is particularly bad for a satellite in geostationary orbit to break up or fail. Satellites are packed as tightly as possible into that orbit due to its economic importance (it's very useful for a satellite, particularly communications satellites, to always be over the same part of the Earth), so there is a higher than normal likelihood that this could be seriously disruptive.
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1. Tepix ◴[21 Oct 24 15:26 UTC] No.41905207[source]▶
Note that for every 1 km at the earths surface, you get 6.61 km at geostationary orbit. So there's quite a bit of room (264,924 km circumference vs 40,075km at ground level).