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Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit

(spacenews.com)
168 points milgrim | 3 comments | 21 Oct 24 14:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.429s | source
1. rapjr9 ◴[21 Oct 24 23:01 UTC] No.41909455[source]▶
I was wondering if a geostationary satellite has ever broken up before. I found a NASA list of satellites that fragmented:

History of On-orbit Satellite Fragmentations, 16th Edition

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20220019160/downloads/HO...

Searching that PDF for "geostationary" I found:

"The Russian government’s disclosure of the Ekran 2 battery explosion on 25 June 1978 is the first known fragmentation in geostationary orbit."

There are two other geostationary fragmentations in the list, Ekran 4 and Ekran 9. These two events are hypothesized to have also been due to battery explosions.

replies(2): >>41910593 #>>41918156 #
2. ◴[22 Oct 24 02:24 UTC] No.41910593[source]▶
3. verzali ◴[22 Oct 24 20:06 UTC] No.41918156[source]▶
AMC-9 and Telkom-1 both broke apart fairly recently too.