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

  • lunar17@lemmy.worldEnglish
    45·
    10 days 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.worldEnglish
      311·
      10 days 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.worldEnglish
        33·
        10 days 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.