Intelsat 33e breaks up in orbit, adding to space junk

A major communications satellite has fragmented while in orbit, disrupting customers across Europe, Central Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia, and further swelling the ever-growing cloud of space junk surrounding our planet.

Intelsat 33e delivered broadband communications from a position roughly 35,000 km above the Indian Ocean, operating in a geostationary orbit over the equator.

Early updates on October 20 indicated Intelsat 33e had suffered an abrupt loss of power. A few hours afterwards, US Space Forces–Space reported the spacecraft appears to have broken apart into at least 20 fragments.

What might have caused this? And does it hint at a future in which break-ups become more common as more satellites are placed into orbit?

A space whodunnit

No confirmed account has yet emerged to explain why Intelsat 33e broke up. Even so, this sort of incident is not without precedent.

Previous episodes have included intentional satellite destruction, unintended collisions, and spacecraft being lost amid heightened solar activity.

What is clear is that Intelsat 33e has experienced problems during its time in space. Built and designed by Boeing, it was sent aloft in August 2016.

In 2017, it arrived in its intended orbit three months later than planned, reportedly because of a problem with its primary thruster, the system responsible for controlling altitude and acceleration.

Further propulsion issues then appeared during what is known as a "station keeping activity", which is used to hold the satellite at the correct altitude. The satellite consumed fuel faster than expected, implying its mission would finish about 3.5 years earlier, in 2027. Intelsat subsequently filed a US$78 million insurance claim linked to these faults.

At the point it fragmented, however, the satellite was reportedly uninsured.

Intelsat is examining the failure, but it is possible the precise trigger for the fragmentation will never be identified. We do know that another Intelsat satellite of the same type - a Boeing-built EpicNG 702 MP - failed in 2019.

The most immediate lesson, though, lies in what follows any such event: space junk.

30 blue whales of space junk

The volume of debris circling Earth is rising quickly. The European Space Agency (ESA) estimates there are more than 40,000 objects larger than 10 cm in orbit, along with more than 130,000,000 pieces smaller than 1 cm.

Altogether, the mass of human-made objects in Earth orbit is about 13,000 tonnes - roughly equivalent to 90 adult male blue whales. Around one third of that total is debris (4,300 tonnes), much of it made up of leftover rocket bodies.

Finding, tracking and classifying space debris is difficult. At greater heights - such as Intelsat 33e’s orbit at around 35,000 km - current capabilities only allow us to detect objects above a certain size.

One particularly troubling aspect of Intelsat 33e’s loss is that the break-up probably generated fragments that are too small to be detected from the ground with existing facilities.

In recent months, several uncontrolled break-ups have occurred involving retired and abandoned hardware in orbit.

In June, the RESURS-P1 satellite split apart in low Earth orbit (an altitude of around 470 km), producing more than 100 trackable debris pieces. That incident also almost certainly created many additional fragments too small to track.

In July, another decommissioned satellite - the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) 5D-2 F8 spacecraft - broke up. In August, the upper stage of a Long March 6A (CZ-6A) rocket fragmented, generating at least 283 trackable pieces of debris, and potentially hundreds of thousands of fragments that cannot be tracked.

It is still unknown whether this latest event will have consequences for other objects in orbit. This is why persistent, continuous sky monitoring is essential for making sense of these complex debris environments.

Who is responsible?

When debris is created in space, who carries responsibility for cleaning it up or keeping it under surveillance?

In principle, the state that launched the object bears responsibility where fault can be demonstrated. This principle is addressed in the 1972 Convention of International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects.

In reality, accountability is often limited. The first penalty relating to space debris was issued in 2023 by the US Federal Communications Commission.

Whether a comparable fine will be levied in connection with Intelsat 33e remains uncertain.

Looking ahead

As human activity in space speeds up, Earth’s orbital regions are becoming steadily more congested. Reducing the risks posed by orbital debris will require ongoing monitoring and better tracking technology, alongside intentional efforts to limit the creation of additional debris.

Most satellites operate far nearer to Earth than Intelsat 33e. In many cases, low Earth orbit satellites can be brought down safely at the end of their service lives (or "de-orbited") without creating space debris - particularly when end-of-mission disposal is planned in advance.

In September, ESA’s Cluster 2 "Salsa" satellite was de-orbited through a targeted re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, where it burned up safely.

Naturally, the larger the object, the greater the amount of debris it could generate. For instance, NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office estimated that if the International Space Station broke apart while in orbit, it would create more than 220 million debris fragments.

For that reason, planning to de-orbit the station (ISS) at the end of its operational life in 2030 is now well advanced, with the contract awarded to SpaceX.

Sara Webb, Lecturer, Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology; Christopher Fluke, Professor, Swinburne University of Technology, and Tallulah Waterson, PhD Student at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.