Intelsat 33e breaks up into pieces
October 24, 2024
By Chris Forrester
The catastrophic failure of Intelsat’s I-33e satellites on October 19th is now known to have created a debris field of at least 40 different pieces. The craft is a total loss, says Intelsat and the company has asked the FCC for permission to use three nearby satellites (two owned by SES and the other by India’s Space Research Organisation) to carry its traffic.
The break up will create worrying headaches for those satellites also orbiting in the geostationary arc and which now may have to circumvent the debris field. Russian space agency Roscosmos says that it has identified 80 pieces of the satellite.
Back in 2019 a similar failure affected Intelsat’s I-29e which, like I-33e, was built by Boeing and was one of their Boeing 702MP versions.
Boeing says it is conducting a thorough investigation in conjunction with Intelsat to understand the root cause of the failure. They say it is too early to say whether a micrometeorite could have caused the problem.
Boeing is naturally keen to discover the cause of the problem given that it has five additional 702MP satellites in orbit.
Intelsat will use SES’s Astra 3B craft and operating from 23.5 degrees East and NSS-12 operating from 57 degrees East to carry some of its traffic. The Indian craft is understood to be GSAT-14 owned by ISRO.
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