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.
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