Navy Destroys Satellite
The USS Lake Erie launched a single, modified SM-3 missile late last night, hitting a disabled American satellite. The Navy says that they believe they scored a "pretty solid" direct hit on the satellite with the missile's kinetic warhead.
A missile fired from a Navy cruiser in the Pacific Ocean hit an out-of-control spy satellite falling toward Earth last night, Pentagon officials said.
They said that a single SM-3 missile fired from the USS Lake Erie hit the satellite at 10:26 p.m. Eastern time. The missile struck the dead satellite about 150 miles above Earth as it traveled in orbit at more than 17,000 mph.
Military officials had hoped to rupture the satellite's fuel tank to prevent 1,000 pounds of hydrazine from crashing to Earth, a situation they depicted as potentially hazardous for people on the ground. It was unclear last night whether the missile hit was able to break up the fuel tank, but Pentagon officials said they hope to determine that within 24 hours.
A news conference is scheduled for 7 a.m.
A defense official said last night that the military believes it got a "pretty solid" direct hit on the satellite.
Before last night's intercept, some experts had expressed doubts about the seriousness of the risk and questioned whether the shot was an excuse to perform an anti-satellite test that many people around the world found controversial. Skeptics in the arms-control community have speculated that the administration chose to undertake the shoot-down partly to test missile defense technology.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and satellite tracker, said after the shoot-down that he had not heard any reports of debris spotting but that "I know people are on the lookout." He said that around midnight the debris was probably over Australia, but that it would be over Canada 30 minutes later.
"Due to the relatively low altitude of the satellite at the time of the engagement, debris will begin to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere immediately," the Pentagon said in a statement. "Nearly all of the debris will burn up on reentry within 24-48 hours and the remaining debris should re-enter within 40 days."
China is whining about the shootdown, as expected. The Pentagon insists they did this out of concern for the large amount of hydrazine on the satellite. Regardless, the Navy did a great job, hitting a relatively small target traveling at a very high rate of speed.
By Sam Wah, Thursday, 21 February , 2008 @ 9:34 am
I think they called it "saber rattling." Looks like some people may be rattled, now. Works for me.