Boeing-Made Satellite Explodes In Space (cbsnews.com) 95
"Boeing has had a series of issues over the past few years," writes Slashdot reader quonset. "From planes crashing, lost service records, to a recent strike which cost them $6 billion, now comes word a satellite they made has exploded in space." CBS News reports: The Intelsat 33e satellite, which was launched in 2016 and provides communications across Europe, Asia and Africa, experienced "an anomaly" on Saturday, Intelsat said in a news release. Attempts were made to work with Boeing and repair the satellite, but on Monday, the U.S. Space Force confirmed that the satellite had exploded. The satellite's breakup left some customers without power or communications services. Intelsat said it is working with third-party providers to limit service interruptions, and is in communication with customers.
Since the breakup, the U.S. Space Force is now tracking "around 20 associated pieces" of the satellite in space. The agency said that there are "no immediate threats" and routine assessments to ensure safety are ongoing. Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, said it had recorded "more than 80 fragments" of the destroyed satellite. Analysis of the pieces' trajectory determined that the destruction of the satellite was "instantaneous and high-energy," Roscosmos said.
Since the breakup, the U.S. Space Force is now tracking "around 20 associated pieces" of the satellite in space. The agency said that there are "no immediate threats" and routine assessments to ensure safety are ongoing. Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, said it had recorded "more than 80 fragments" of the destroyed satellite. Analysis of the pieces' trajectory determined that the destruction of the satellite was "instantaneous and high-energy," Roscosmos said.
Innovation Demands Space (Score:2)
Not that much space where multiple parts are scattered all over our stratosphere?
https://www.militaryaerospace.... [militaryaerospace.com]
Power? (Score:5, Interesting)
...left some customers without power...
Did I miss the memo that mentioned that power delivery from orbit was now a thing?
Or did someone actually design a terrestrial power network that depends on telecoms provided by a single-point-of-failure that cannot be reached to repair?
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This is the piece that stood out for me.
If so, everyone involved in the decision needs a corrective smack.
incorrectly summarised (Score:4, Informative)
The satellite experienced an anomaly on October 19, resulting in a loss of power and service to customers. We are working closely with Boeing, the satellite manufacturer, to address the situation. Based on the information available to us, we believe it is unlikely that the satellite will be recoverable.
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We just need to drag it outside the environment!
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That's what you do when the FRONT falls off. When a door falls off, you turn the thing into a submarine, at least if it was a screen door.
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They're usually designed so the front doesn't fall off.
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Theres nothing out there, its a complete void.
Re:incorrectly summarised (Score:5, Informative)
resulting in a loss of power and service to customers.
So, as usual, terrible communication skills.
Better rewritten as "a loss of power, affecting service delivery to customers"
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This calls for a Harvard comma [wikipedia.org].
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Didn't know the Oxford Comma actually went with two other names as well.
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They're not. Harvard plagiarized the Oxford comma.
Obligatory xkcd (Score:2)
There's (allegedly) more where those came from [xkcd.com]...
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...and is in communication with customers.
This is the one that bugs me. If they're able to communicate with the customers, what do the customers need their service for?
put parentheses. (Score:1)
Re:put parentheses. (Score:4)
I'm pretty sure the satellite's failure didn't result in service to customers.
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Customers are meant to be charged more and more but less and less serviced
I think your parent poster was right, if customer suddenly were serviced, it was probably part of the failure
Re: put parentheses. (Score:2)
Why? White space should be sufficient to disambiguate anything.
- The Python Development Team
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(loss of (power) and (service to customers))
Re: Power? (Score:1)
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I'm sure the power loss was to the satellite itself, not a terrestrial power grid and the loss of power resulted in the satellite being incapable of servicing it's customers.
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I don't doubt that there are some out-in-the-sticks facilities where satellite modems are the only thing keeping the operator clued in about when they need to sen
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Sadly, this is partially true. Timing is something that's needed in a lot of industries - power and telecoms. Having access to atomic-clock accurate reference times is required for many systems to operate properly. It's why most countries operate a timing facility to provide accurate time. (Time as a service, is a thing before the whole "as a service" thi
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terrible editing... what they meant was that the satellite had lost power, thus the customers lost communications.
what's frustrating is that there is little in terms of cause of the initial "anomaly"... could have been anything or a combination of things... fuel leak, micro meteor/debris, thruster malfunction, battery malfunction, damage from any of the many powerful solar storms we had recently.
The article has no information other than Boeing built it, it suffered a catastrophic failure after 8 years in or
MTG: 2, MSM: 0 (Score:1)
MTG is right again! Smartest Neanderthal alive.
(She recently claimed Democrats have weather-control devices.)
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Depending how you interpret the article, either they meant:
"problems with the power delivery on the sattelite" (Bird)
or "the satellite was used to track power delivery" and without the two-way communications customers that are not inside a city might not be billed for energy use, and consequently, might get disconnected by the switching system. Or similarly, track outages.
Either way I don't think the sattelite itself was beaming energy downwards for powering devices. It just feels like the description may h
Timely (Score:2, Informative)
Hanlon's Razor (Score:1)
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nah, intelsat 33e was in a geostationary orbit. way too far for this sort of missile
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China and India are supposed to have ASAT missiles that can reach GEO.
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Of course they are claimed to, but any missile would be tracked from the moment of launch. Meanwhile the US and Russia have military satellites on orbit that can send a 'smart bullet' into a satellite's communications array without causing the massive damage that can provoke a Kessler Syndrome scenario. (Yeah, I know that GEO is sparsely enough populated that Kessler is not a concern there yet.) This is almost certainly a Boeing issue, probably hypergolic fuels leaked and reacted.
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"probably hypergolic fuels leaked and reacted"
I think so, too.
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And the US (as well as several NATO allies) have radar that would easily spot such a missile, on such a trajectory.
Do you think they would not have said something if China or India directly attacked a satellite?
This sounds like Boeing just made a shitty satellite that went *bang*. Not that hard to imagine with all their other failures lately.
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We did not talk about that.
Obviously that sartelite simply made *Boing!*
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And Kim Jong Un has just had 4 of his top "space debris tracking" officers shot for not doing their job as he has personally tracked 20,000,000. All whilst breaking the record for the perfect 18 holes in one game of golf... on the longest fairways ever built... ...on the moon.. without breathing apparatus.
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Destroyed with ICBMs.
Kimmy doesn't fuck around with failure.
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translation: "our Russian radars are much better than yours"
Or maybe merely "it's worse than they say it is!", which is pretty common in international "dialog".
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translation: "our Russian radars are much better than yours"
Yes, much in the way that my night-time glare double-vision is better than your 20/20 vision.
Re:lost service records, yeh right (Score:1)
They are safe right next to Jimmy Hoffa.
Impact (Score:5, Insightful)
destruction of the satellite was "instantaneous and high-energy"
Probably colided with space junk or rock.
Re:Impact (Score:5, Informative)
Probably colided with space junk or rock.
That's possible, but it was in geosynchronous orbit, far above where Kessler junk is normally a problem.
If it was a collision, that should be obvious from the net momentum of the debris.
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Geostationary is more a narrow toroid though unlike low orbit which is a spherical shell with more room for space junk to spread out. I wonder what the junk density is at geostationary.
On the other hand a lot of stuff in geostationary should flying at low relative speeds in the same direction.
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The satellite itself wouldn't have been moving with respect to the earth, but wouldn't the debris remain moving at the speeds they were initially ejected at from the explosion?
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Yeah, at least in the simple scenario. In low orbit things fly at 30000km/h and not all in the same direction. In geostationary things would break up at speed differences at magnitudes less so they wouldn't collide at high speeds.
Things might change once a meteorite intervenes though.
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What the heck, there appears to be a wide band of small debris at geostationary and it moves at an angle with the sattelites.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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The satellite itself wouldn't have been moving with respect to the earth, but wouldn't the debris remain moving at the speeds they were initially ejected at from the explosion?
To be more precise, before its destruction, the satellite would have been orbiting the earth around the equator with the same period as the earth's rotation, so it appears stationary when viewed from the ground. That's the point of GEO.
If the debris appears to expand uniformly from that stationary position, then that's evidence for an internal explosion. However, if we observe a net movement of the center of mass of the debris away from the apparent stationary position, then that's evidence the satellite wa
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Of course, we might see a net movement if there was an internal explosion and part of the debris was not visible.
Or the explosion was on one side of the spacecraft and it consisted of untrackable gases (e.g., hypergolic fuel.) That would propel the debris in an observable net direction.
Sorry, forgot to include that point.
Re:Impact (Score:5, Interesting)
Thumbs up on this answer!
Here's a cool graphic showing the debris spread [twitter.com] after collision. there are some good threads following this on various platforms.
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Some pieces keep making u-turns! I'm not saying it's aliens but...
Actually I suspect they are in an elliptical orbit such that their position relative to Earth's surface shuffles back and forth.
But the UFO theory is more fun, dammit
No U turn [Re:Impact] (Score:2)
Here's a cool graphic showing the debris spread [twitter.com] after collision. ...
Some pieces keep making u-turns!
Only looks like u-turns, since the graphic is fixed in the Earth's rotating frame, moving at 3.1 km/s at geosynchronous orbit.
Actually I suspect they are in an elliptical orbit such that their position relative to Earth's surface shuffles back and forth.
Exactly. If it's been kicked into a slightly elliptical orbit, sometimes the debris is moving faster than geosynchronous speed, and sometimes slower. If your reference frame is fixed to geosynchronous orbit, this appears like moving forward and backwards.
Re: Impact (Score:2)
Play enough ksp and you'll come to learn that altitude affects orbital speed. When the debris speeds up, its elevation is low down; when the debris slows down and reverses direction, that happens when the elevation is back to or higher than geostationary altitude.
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Well talking about space junk, it's Boeing. Their intelsat 29e is also up there.
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"Exploded" is a pretty unusual description for a satellite failure. Possibly something hit fuel storage and hypergolic fuels leaked and reacted, but considering Boeing's competence in pretty much everything else over the last decade bad seals seem more likely.
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"I wish this thing hadn't been built by the lowest bidder." - John Glenn before his first spaceflight.
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"Exploded" is a pretty unusual description for a satellite failure. Possibly something hit fuel storage and hypergolic fuels leaked and reacted, but considering Boeing's competence in pretty much everything else over the last decade bad seals seem more likely.
Given the 787, lithium ion batteries seem like another possibility. :-D
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Most likely station keeping/RCS fuel went pop.
Meteor? (Score:2)
I mean that's bad luck .. I meancc I am not an experts, but it sounds weird for a satellite to explode like that after 8 years.
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Probably (Score:2)
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CEO pay (Score:2, Insightful)
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I call it the game of Executive Musical Chairs, the trick is to not be sitting in the corner office when the results of your bad decisions come home to roost.
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Clearly CEO pay and bonuses are not linked to quality healthy company. How can I get one of these gigs?
Why do you think wealthy people pay the huge fees to send their kids to Ivy League universities? It's not for the education, it's the connections they will make there.
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That's how it would appear to a non-expert. However, if you ask executive compensation experts, they'd tell you this is the result of imperfect alignment. If only the board had provided more incentive to avoid explodey satellites, of course the superhero CEO would have navigated around this regrettable outcome.
Exploded in high orbit (Score:4, Funny)
Must have been aliens.
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No this has been set up by a couple of companies selling hard hats.
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I was wondering when Big Hardhat was going to start flexing their muscles and making life miserable for everyone else...
Dreamliner in space. (Score:1)
Exploded? From what? (Score:2)
What is in a commercial communications satellite that can go so badly it will explode and send 20+ chunks of debris in all directions?
It shouldn't have anything more interesting than a battery and a small load of fuel to maintain its orbital position.
Since when do they launch civilian satellites with high energy explosives on board?
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Wrong account?
Re:Exploded? From what? (Score:5, Informative)
What I'd be curious about is how much energy is actually required to cause a dramatic breakup. They presumably build satellites durably enough to avoid being shaken to pieces during launch; but there is presumably zero extra credit for blowing mass on overbuilding something that is going to spend its operating life in close to zero atmosphere and close to zero gravity; and since it's a communication satellite loaded with antennas it presumably has a lot of parts that are quite carefully designed in ways that give them outsize radar signatures.
I'd be shocked if it was carrying something (or even hit something large enough) to cause much breakup of the sorts of structural pieces that sometimes survive being deorbited; significantly less shocked if a bunch of delicate multipart unfolding antenna bits or collapsible dishes take considerably less violence to shake loose.
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Apparently the 702MP satellite bus uses two different types of engines for station keeping; both fueled by one of the unpleasant hypergolic combination options(anyone know which?).
Intelsat 33e used the LEROS 1c [wikipedia.org] as the main engine, it uses Hydrazine/MON bipropellant.
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What is in a commercial communications satellite that can go so badly it will explode and send 20+ chunks of debris in all directions?
I'm going with hypergolic rocket fuel for station keeping and enough lithium ion batteries to keep it powered through maximum eclipse duration of around 72 minutes, especially when either of the above is hit by a micro-meteor.
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Well considering that the "small load of fuel" is a hypergolic fuel that combusts upon mixture with it's intended oxidizer, it's not that much of a stretch to think there could have been a fuel tank rupture (bad seal, micrometeor, etc) which lead to fuel mixing with oxidizer in an uncontrolled fashion and you get a pretty good bang.
This satellite also has a designed lifetime of 15 years, so it's probably not that small of a tank of either the fuel or the oxidizer.
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Well considering that the "small load of fuel" is a hypergolic fuel that combusts upon mixture with it's intended oxidizer, it's not that much of a stretch to think there could have been a fuel tank rupture (bad seal, micrometeor, etc) which lead to fuel mixing with oxidizer in an uncontrolled fashion and you get a pretty good bang.
This satellite also has a designed lifetime of 15 years, so it's probably not that small of a tank of either the fuel or the oxidizer.
Yeah, at the speeds stuff could generate flinging around between bodies out there? It wouldn't take much mass to penetrate the containment for those fuels. Could have been something smaller than a pebble. One shot through the right part of the craft, a few seconds for the fuel to hit the oxidizer and *blamo* fireworks.
It could happen to any craft out there with fuel on it. But with Boeing's current reputation, who knows what kind of nonsense will get bandied about?
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Hydrazine, for example.
If you had a leak that accumulated and then randomly brushed against the catalyst, that could be enough to set off the rest, since once you get hydrazine nice and hot, it'll spontaneously decompose without catalyst.
hydrazine monopropellant thrusters are pretty safe, but they do have some spectacular failure modes.
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and a small load of fuel to maintain its orbital position.
Since when do they launch civilian satellites with high energy explosives on board?
You answered your own question.
A very small amount of hydrazine does a whole lot of work, if it accidentally hits the catalyst in an uncontrolled fashion.
Anybody surprised? (Score:2)
Butch and Suni (Score:2)
Gov't is going to have to (Score:2)
...bail out Boeing soon. I smell it.
If we let them fail then US becomes too dependent on Airbus and China for passenger jets. After the pandemic supply problems, I don't think many want to risk such dependency. If things get desperate in a crisis, their own markets get priority over the US, leaving us low and dry.
Bean counters ruin all the good stuff.
The Hydazine thrusters never worked on 33e (Score:4, Interesting)