10 ms·
Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit
- someperson 2y agoWith falling cost of launch, there seems an opportunity to have a program to clean up orbital debris, funded by insurance premiums for orbits that don't self clean (like GEO). At least of the bigger debris.
- xvector 2y agoBoeing should be forced to clean up the mess they made on their dime, or it's prison for the execs. We are far too light on execs causing irreparable harm to humanity.
- JoeAltmaier 2y agoMaybe a bit confused - paying for damages is a civil/contract matter. Jail is for crimes committed by a person. The parent comment explained some reasonable contractual mechanisms for civil remedy - insurance etc.
- DrillShopper 2y agoThings can be both - insurance fraud jumps to mind, for example. You have to make the insurance company whole (they sue you in civil court) and you have to stand trial for your alleged crime (you're arraigned in criminal court).
- ranger_danger 2y agoSure are an awful lot of armchair experts in here.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y agoThis place would be dreadfully quiet if only true experts were allowed to comment on anything. I certainly enjoy reading some of these theories, even if the professionals in the hot seat disagree with their take.
- someperson 2y agoDefinitely reply with concrete rebuttals than denigrate the knowledge of others
- m463 2y agoI think part of that is the consequence of lack information. just what happened, but no why or other context.
- milgrim 2y agoFor some context: The same Boeing satellite bus already experienced a major issue some years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19658800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19658800
- api 2y agoThe complete collapse of Boeing needs to be studied.
- SteveNuts 2y agoThey should teach it in every MBA program in the country /s.
- dylan604 2y agoYou joke, but it absolutely should. Boeing is a great example of "when all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail". When MBAs are left in charge with no guardrails, this is what can happen. That's a great thing to teach to new MBAs. Every field has this potential pitfall. When you hyperfocus, bad things can happen. Know when to say when.
- mschuster91 2y ago> Know when to say when. People warned about exactly what happened already back in the time when the merger happened that introduced beancounter culture to Boeing. The problem was, as always, no one listens to the warners and the whiners when there is money to be made.
- weard_beard 2y agoThe only counter to the money argument is tough regulation that results in jail time. If the whiners can point to an example of white collar criminal enforcement their complaints suddenly have teeth.
- nordsieck 2y agoIt 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.
- accrual 2y agoIndeed, 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 https://www.satsig.net/sslist.htm
- nordsieck 2y agoLooks 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-291
- bryanlarsen 2y agoIt'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.
- lupusreal 2y agoMost of the debris will have eccentric orbits with varied periods which intersect geostationary orbits. Every satellite in a geostationary orbit is at risk, not just the ones near it.
- deskr 2y ago> ... satellite maker Boeing to address an anomaly that emerged earlier that day, but “believe it is unlikely that the satellite will be recoverable.” Yeah, the satellite disintegrates and they call it an "anomaly" and "unlikely that the satellite will be recoverable". This response is even funnier than "the front fell off" sketch. I feel like it's time to class Boeing as not only inept but a dangerously inept organisation.
- ThrowawayTestr 2y agoHow does a satellite break up in orbit? Was it struck by something?
- milgrim 2y agoThe satellite here was using the same Boeing bus: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/new-video-of-intelsat-29e-satellite-reveals-dramatic-anomaly/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/new-video-of-intelsa... So something similar might have happened here.
- dylan604 2y agoWaiting for a leak of emails where engineers expressed concerns on the design/elements and management approved anyways.
- DrillShopper 2y agoWow, these companies really are replicating NASA management
- pdabbadabba 2y agoFor a satellite in a stable GEO orbit, I think there are basically two possibilities: 1. Collision with other debris 2. Internal fault causing uncontrolled release of stored energy (i.e., explosion) Intelsat-29e used the same satellite bus and experienced #2, in the form of some sort of uncontrolled propellant release.
- visviva 2y agoThe most likely options are that it was struck by debris or that there was an explosion onboard. Those two are not mutually exclusive, either.
- mattofak 2y agoCould be struck by a micrometeorite, or if they were doing a station keeping maneuver something could have gone wrong with a thruster. (Apparently the first in it's class Intelsat-29e was lost due to a fuel leak, so maybe there is something systemically wrong in the spacecraft bus.)
- Mistletoe 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dylan604 2y agoFrom TFA, this bird is the 2nd in this "next generation" of satellites. The first one also failed because either "a meteoroid impact or a wiring flaw that led to an electrostatic discharge following heightened solar weather activity." That's a pretty specific flaw to then just write it off to a meteor. So they are 0 for 2. Does not instill confidence in this "next generation" at all.
- thehappypm 2y ago“Either a strike from a meteor, OR this highly specific wiring problem. Could be either! ” is actually pretty funny
- ck2 2y agoPrivatize the profit, socialize the cleanup costs. Start making these companies pay into an insurance superfund. Who is going to pay the day SpaceX has a "whoops" ?
- eagerpace 2y agoPay for what?
- whywhywhywhy 2y agoWhat cleanup costs?
- nordsieck 2y ago> Who is going to pay the day SpaceX has a "whoops" ? Ironically, SpaceX is probably one of the least bad companies in that regard. 1. They launch satellites to a very low LEO orbit. The satellites use their onboard thrusters to get to their final orbits. This means that satellites that malfunction early in their life (the first lip of the bathtub[1]) deorbit in a matter of months. And they're so low, they don't affect anyone else. 2. And even Starlink satellites that do fail are at such a low orbital height that they'll spontaneously deorbit in 5-10 years. --- 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve
- sharpshadow 2y agoAnother blunder for Boeing right up next to naming things „Epic Next Generation“… What’s with the missing insurance? Didn’t they get any insurance because of the previous debacle with a Intelsat where they couldn’t decide if it was a internal or external source? Who would pay now if debris causes damage? Interesting to see the Space Force now mentioned and following the Wikipedia list[1] the standard procedure seem to be to create a new agency every couple of decades which takes over the previous one but with a new name. What are the reasons for this? Edit: [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_forces,_units,_and_formations#Independent_space_forces https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_forces,_units,...
- mynameisvlad 2y ago> Interesting to see the Space Force now mentioned and following the Wikipedia list[1] the standard procedure seem to be to create a new agency every couple of decades which takes over the previous one but with a new name. What are the reasons for this? Is it a "standard operating procedure" if there are only two examples of it happening (and independent space forces in general)? In any case, even for those that still aren't fully independent, it seems to be slowly separating air and space forces as space became a bigger player in the global arms race.
- ckozlowski 2y agoYou're largely correct. Space has become a more important domain which is growing all of the time. There had been a complaint within the USAF hierarchy and in the government as a whole that the USAF had neglected the space mission. It's leadership was overwhelmingly representatives by those from it's fighter wings. Space was a command within the USAF, but was stifled in both budget and representation. The stars finally aligned for it to be broken off. While it still resides within the Department of the Air Force (similar to how the Marines are within the Department of the Navy), it's CO reports directly to the President and they are budgeted separately through Congress.
- dtquad 2y agoBoeing R&D and manufacturing is completely separated which is probably a significant source of problems for them. Often manufacturing is moved to locations that gives tax breaks and other benefits. Meanwhile Airbus R&D engineers in Toulouse and Hamburg are often less than a 5 minute walk from where their designs are being manufactured.
- tverbeure 2y agoThe linked article shows a picture of the debris. Just amazing that we can do this for tiny objects that 35,000 km away from us, but apparently it's something that can even be done by amateurs: it's 'just' a matter of keeping the exposure time long enough. Here's an article about that: https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/how-to-see-and-photograph-geosynchronous-satellites https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/how-to-see-and-photogr... There are commercial services that keep visual track of geostationary satellites. A couple of years ago, IIRC, a Russian satellite broke down and there were pictures of the disintegration.
- stavros 2y ago> “believe it is unlikely that the satellite will be recoverable.” Why do these announcements have to be so hedgy? The satellite is in twenty pieces, I'd think that with the probability of spontaneous reconstruction being so low, we're fairly safe to say "will not be recoverable".
- dylan604 2y agoIs it only in 20 pieces, or did 20 pieces break off? Sudden unscheduled disassembly can happen differently. The probability is that there are 20 pieces they are able to track and many many more pieces that are smaller
- barryrandall 2y agoBecause it was posted on the internet, where new and exciting forms of pedantry are invented every day.
- bigiain 2y agoI assume this is the new Boeing Intelsat MAX-8?
- rapjr9 2y agoI 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/HOOSF_16e_all_for_STRIVES.pdf 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.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- verzali 2y agoAMC-9 and Telkom-1 both broke apart fairly recently too.