A satellite belonging to multinational service provider Intelsat mysteriously broke up in geostationary orbit over the weekend.

  • Echo Dot
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    3 hours ago

    That’s actually quite impressive because most satellites just don’t do anything when they die. Boeing’s vehicles die with flare, and depressing regularity

  • lunar17@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    This is slightly concerning. Satellites don’t tend to explode on their own, but it is a Boeing design with a history of leaky propulsion, so who knows?

    • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Sure it was a Comm satellite for the world’s tensest area, which is about to go to bigger war.

      who would have ASAT capability at GEO?

      how could it be launched to GEO undetected?

      • Zron@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        If you’re a government, you can pretty much put anything in a rocket fairing and call it a reconnaissance satellite.

        The only warning that actually has to be given is that a rocket is being launched, so you don’t accidentally trigger WW3 by setting off launch detection satellites without warning. After it’s in space, no one can really tell what was in the fairing. Could be a spy satellite, could be navigation. Could just be a box with a bunch of little rockets in it, designed to slam into whatever you want at ridiculous speed.

        But it’s way more likely that this was just Boeing having a tiny leak in a propellant tank, or a bad thruster and as soon as the concentration of propellant and oxidizer got high enough, it triggered a detonation. They certainly have a history of not leak testing their shit: airplanes falling apart, space capsules with leaky thrusters, and now a blown up satellite point more towards incompetence than malice.

  • Zip2
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    5 hours ago

    Rapid unscheduled disassembly.

    Plus “Into pieces” is rather unnecessary there.

  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    did you know that high powered lasers are invisible to the naked without a sufficient particulate medium to pass through?

  • Rose56@lemmy.ca
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    4 hours ago

    I did read about this yesterday, and as far as I know the name of the sat is intelsat 33e and its for communication purposes. I’m curious to know what really happen, how it broke.

  • clutchtwopointzero@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Boeing: outsources to an outsourcer who outsources to an outsourcer who outsources to an outsourcer who outsources to an outsourcer and so on and still has the shamelessness of appearing surprised at the shit quality and reliability they deliver

  • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    …was designed and manufactured by Boeing Space Systems and launched in 2016. It provided broadband services, including internet and phone communication services, to parts of Europe, Africa, and most of Asia.

    IS-33e was the second satellite to be launched as part of Boeing’s “next generation” EpicNG platform. The first, dubbed IS-29e, failed due to a propulsion system fuel leak. Intelsat declared the satellite a total loss in April 2019, later attributing it to either a micrometeoroid strike or solar weather activity.

    What caused IS-33e to break up in orbit remains unclear, however. Intesalt officials did observe that it was using far more fuel than it should be to maintain its orbit shortly after launching eight years ago, shaving off 3.5 years of its 15-year lifetime.

    Could be a coincidence, but I feel “Boeing leaks” approaching “Samsung exploding” levels of memification (where they had washers, phones and some other things all exploding, and the look was not great).

    Samsung shook the meme off, but I feel like Boeing will have a harder time.

    • yeather@lemmy.ca
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      7 hours ago

      Samsung makes consumer grade products that are “easily” replaced or fixed. Boeing makes shit for the US military, and they will 100% get what’s coming to them when a Boeing military project spontaneously combusts.

      • Echo Dot
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        3 hours ago

        I do sort of feel that Samsung got a bit of a bad rep for their phones exploding because it wasn’t really their fault. The company that made the batteries took shortcuts in the manufacturing process and that’s what caused the fires. If they had followed the instructions Samsung had given them they would have been okay.

        Although equally the company wouldn’t have felt the need to take shortcuts if Samsung had made the batteries to a standard design.