A Communications Satellite Just Died in Orbit. It's Potentially Dangerous Space Junk Now

Space.com ^ | 04/21/2019 | Leonard David

[BenLurkin]

Luxembourg-based Intelsat reports that its Intelsat 29E satellite (IS-29E) is now a total loss, after having reported earlier that the spacecraft suffered an anomaly.

Late on April 7, the Intelsat 29e propulsion system experienced damage that caused a leak of the propellant on board the satellite, resulting in a service disruption to customers..

That event caused a service outage on the Intelsat 29e satellite that affected maritime, aeronautical and wireless-operator customers in the Latin America, Caribbean and North Atlantic regions.

While working to recover the satellite, a second anomaly occurred, after which all efforts to recover the satellite were unsuccessful, Intelsat representatives said.

Intelsat's declaration of IS-29E a total loss "means it will continue to drift uncontrolled along its current orbit in GEO [geostationary orbit]," said T.S. Kelso, the operator of CelesTrak, a leading source for orbital element sets and related software to keep an eye on satellites and orbital debris.

Kelso tweeted on April 16 that the current situation with IS-29E "continues to be quite troubling," with the satellite spiraling around its spacecraft siblings IS-11 & IS-32E. Additionally, there are reports of 13 pieces of associated debris, he said.

[txnativegop]

I was thinking of a separate control system designed to de-orbit the device in the event of primary control system failure.

Sorry if I did not make that clear.