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Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit

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Re: Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit

#41

Post by psunavy03 »

SteveNuts wrote: post #6
api wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complete collapse of Boeing needs to be studied.

They should teach it in every MBA program in the country /s.

If you gave a company over to only engineers, it would also fail, just in a different way. Same with only HR, or any other field. MBAs are not the problem. Shitty MBAs and shitty leadership are the problem. MBAs aren't there to screw people over; they're there to sustainably run a company. Sure, the bad ones screw people over in the name of nickel-and-diming. But still.

And no, I'm not an MBA . . .

Re: Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit

#42

Post by bryanlarsen »

naikrovek wrote: post #28
perihelions wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- "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.

It can reach you, sure. But the chances of hitting are miniscule. If you could throw a basketball a few hundred kilometres you're still likely to miss the net.

Re: Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit

#43

Post by bryanlarsen »

nordsieck wrote: post #27
accrual wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

Re: Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit

#44

Post by dylan604 »

milgrim wrote: post #12
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #8

How does a satellite break up in orbit? Was it struck by something?

The satellite here was using the same Boeing bus: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/new-video-of-intelsa... So something similar might have happened here.

Waiting for a leak of emails where engineers expressed concerns on the design/elements and management approved anyways.

Re: Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit

#45

Post by throw4950sh06 »

ben_w wrote: post #38
naikrovek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes there's no air resistance, but also most of the fragments aren't going your way. If you have a 25 m^2 cross section in the direction of the explosion, at that distance you have a roughly 1 in 246 billion chance of any given bit of debris hitting you.

What is the chance of getting hit by further broken pieces of that satellite and other satellites?

When calculating risk, you have to take into account how many are there and what is the chance that any will be hit. Then you have to calculate what's the chance this will happen again, etc - and only then you can calculate the risk to your own satellite.

It's true that the chance of getting hit by one broken satellite is small. But that assumes there are exactly 2 things on the orbit.

Re: Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit

#48

Post by worstspotgain »

panzagl wrote: post #31
worstspotgain wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An accidental strike is unlikely. Either a massive malfunction, or maybe ASAT [1]. ASAT is always going to be a possibility from now on simply because the target might prefer to deny getting hit. [1] https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2024-03/news/us-warns-new-ru...

I think we'd know if the Russians detonated a nuke in orbit.

That's not the only kind of weapon.

Re: Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit

#49

Post by SteveNuts »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #37
SteveNuts wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I didn't really know how to articulate nuance of the sarcasm in my comment, I fully agree it should. But it's such a massive clusterfuck for Boeing that it seems like MBA programs should be reformed from the ground up.

>They should teach it in every MBA program in the country /s. As if it wasn't the result of what has been taught for decades, now coming of age more bigly than ever ;) >MBA programs should be reformed from the ground up. Who would do the reforming though? Academic leaders? That could be like having the inmates running the asylum :) From the ground up? If you're not careful they could end up building an insane new ins…

Yeah this is exactly why I added the /s

I don't know the answer but hopefully "the powers that be" take a really close look at this situation.

Every company in the US should do some serious introspection.

Re: Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit

#50

Post by idunnoman1222 »

nordsieck wrote: post #4

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.

No, you cannot shift orbit with a single burn maneuver so whatever explosion unless it exploded the other way later cannot shift orbit if the pieces accelerated relative to earth they’re going into a higher orbit if they decelerated they go into a lower orbit Transverse thrust would cause a procession which should be very unlikely to hit another Geo stationary satellite in the future
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