Boeing’s curse in space continues: one of its satellites explodes in full orbit

2024 is being a disastrous year for Boeing. And it’s not over yet… This weekend A satellite manufactured by the company, Intelsat 33a, has exploded in spacescattering dozens of fragments of dangerous space debris.

He Intelsat 33a satellite of Boeing It had been in orbit for eight years, and its life cycle was 15 years. He was barely halfway done.

It is not the first Boeing satellite to be lost. Intelsat 29a suffered a similar incidentafter three years orbiting the Earth.

When a satellite explodes, the worst comes later

Boeing is accumulating numerous failures and controversies so far in 2024. Inside Earth, it faces a complicated trial due to the accidents of several planes Boeing 737 Max.

Outside of that, its first mission to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, with its Starliner capsule, has been another fiasco, since The astronauts have had to stay there, due to failures in the Starliner. They went for a few days, and they are going to spend a year at the station.

Added to all this is the satellite incident. According to the US Space Force report, via Jalopnik, On October 19, the explosion of the Intelsat 33e satellite was detected. On Monday its total destruction was confirmed.

The Intelsat 33a communications satellite was launched in 2016, and already at launch had problems with the propellerwhich caused it to reach orbit later than expected.

In 2017, another unspecified problem made Boeing reduce its life cycle from 15 to 11.5 years. Everything indicates that last weekend’s accident has to do with some failure of the aforementioned propulsion.

The worst of all is that The explosion has generated abundant space debris which could collide with other satellites, and destroy them.

According to one’s own Intelsat20 pieces of the satellite have been observed. However, the independent company ExoAnalytic Solutions has detected at least 57 pieces of space junk.

For Boeing, this explosion of its satellite, beyond the economic losses, is a new loss of reputation. The best thing that can happen is that 2024 ends now, to look at the new year with new perspectives.

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Tags: NASA, Curiosities