It's more likely that something energetic happened with an onboard system (propulsion or batteries). Could just be leaky valves causing propellant and oxidizer to meet somewhere they shouldn't..
It's had a few propulsion system issues:
> On 9 September 2016, Intelsat announced that due to a malfunction in the LEROS-1c primary thruster, it would require more time for orbit rising ...
> In August 2017, another propulsion issue appeared, leading to larger-than-expected propellant usage to control the satellite attitude during the north/south station keeping maneuvers. This issue reduced the orbital life-time by about 3.5 years.
It's anyways possible that it was struck by a meteorite or a piece of space debris that's too small to be tracked.
But these satellites also carry fuel for orbit keeping, evasion manoeuvres and going to a graveyard orbit at its end of life. Given that this satellite had two separate propulsion issues and Intelsat-29e suffered from electrostatic discharge it's not difficult to imagine the satellite igniting its fuel in an uncontrolled manner
Could be struck by a micrometeorite, or if they were doing a station keeping maneuver something could have gone wrong with a thruster. (Apparently the first in it's class Intelsat-29e was lost due to a fuel leak, so maybe there is something systemically wrong in the spacecraft bus.)
There's a lot of stored energy in satellites: fuel, gas pressurizers, batteries. End-of-life geosynchronous satellites sometimes drain all of these, deliberately, to limit their hazard as space junk.
An accidental strike is unlikely. Either a massive malfunction, or maybe ASAT [1]. ASAT is always going to be a possibility from now on simply because the target might prefer to deny getting hit.
Lots of real estate between "might prefer to deny it" and "untraceable." On HN at least, you should assume the best possible interpretation instead of putting words into mouths.
And yes, malfunction is the most likely cause, distantly followed by attack. Micrometeoroid isn't very likely IMO, considering Intelsat-29e failed similarly. Unless maybe if they painted a red target on it and the meteor god has a sense of humor.
It's had a few propulsion system issues:
> On 9 September 2016, Intelsat announced that due to a malfunction in the LEROS-1c primary thruster, it would require more time for orbit rising ...
> In August 2017, another propulsion issue appeared, leading to larger-than-expected propellant usage to control the satellite attitude during the north/south station keeping maneuvers. This issue reduced the orbital life-time by about 3.5 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_33e