Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit

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.

- "Satellites are packed as tightly as possible into that orbit due to its economic importance"

Note that that's in the sense of angular separation, as viewed from the ground. They're physically hundreds of kilometers apart.

edit: (Geostationary orbits are ~42,000 km from the Earth center-of-mass; each degree of angle is an arc of ~700 km).

> They're physically hundreds of kilometers apart.

That’s pretty close when your neighbor just exploded and there’s almost exactly zero air resistance to prevent debris from reaching you.

Getting hit by debris that flies away directly from an explosion would very bad luck indeed. Just think about how well you would have to aim to hit someone 10km away.

But some debris (in particular slower pieces) will probably oscillate around the geostationary orbit giving it countless chances of hitting other satellites.

Has someone modelled this for example in Kerbal space program?