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.

Indeed, Intelsat 33e has a couple nearby neighbors in similar orbits and inclinations.

    ID      Name                    Orbit   Incl.
    98050A  ASTRA 2A                57.2    4.93
    09017A  WGS F2 (USA 204)        57.5    0.01
    14023B  KAZSAT-3                58.5    0.02
    12008A  BEIDOU-2 G5             58.7    2.10
    16053B  INTELSAT 33E (IS-33E)   60.0    0.04 <-- 20+ debris components
    19014A  WGS 10 (USA 291)        60.3    0.01
    04007A  ABS-4 (MOBISAT-1)       61.0    3.86
    10008A  EWS-G2 (GOES 15)        61.5    0.04
    19049B  INTELSAT 39 (IS-39)     62.0    0.02

https://www.satsig.net/sslist.htm

Looks like WGS-10 is the closest.

From Wikipedia, it looks like it's a USSF satellite launched in 2019 with a service life of 14 years. It provides wideband communications to DoD customers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-291

It's 0.3 degrees ahead in orbit. Which means the debris needs to speed up to collide. It's possible if the break-up was explosive, but most, if not all of the debris is more likely to stay at the same velocity or slow down.

Speeding up does not work, that'll just put it in a higher orbit. My understanding of these issues is that introduced eccentricity gets you: if it takes the "inside corner" (is that the English word for binnenbocht/innenkurve?) around the earth, it could then then meet you on the other side where the orbits intersect. If it sped up (flying out of the corner, in this race analogy) and thereby took a longer way around, it'd rather be a danger to those immediately behind (with each orbit, progressively further back along the circular orbital path)

Disclaimer: this comes from playing a self-made orbital mechanics game, I have no training whatsoever let alone professional experience with this

> this comes from playing a self-made orbital mechanics game

My interest is piqued!

Thanks, but don't expect too much! (In particular on mobile where you can't zoom by scroll wheel or use arrow keys to fly.) I mentioned it in an earlier comment, probably easiest to refer back to that for some context/hints: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35763506