On-orbit breakup
The disintegration of a satellite into many fragments without a collision, through a tank or battery explosion or a structural failure.
Most orbital debris comes not from collisions but from breakups: a pressurized tank, a battery or leftover propellant releases its energy and the object scatters into a cloud of pieces. That is why end-of-life rules require passivation, which means venting tanks and discharging batteries before abandoning a satellite. In geostationary orbit, a breakup is especially serious, because the debris stays in the ring that hosts the most expensive satellites, with no atmospheric drag to bring it down. For the insurer, the event combines the total loss of the object with a new exposure for the other satellites in the same ring, which the operator that caused the debris generally does not cover. It also feeds the fear of Kessler syndrome, of which breakups are one of the drivers.
On October 19, 2024, the Intelsat 33e satellite, launched in August 2016 and already hit by a propulsion failure, broke up in geostationary orbit over the Indian Ocean; US Space Forces tracked about twenty fragments, and Intelsat declared a total loss.
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