February 14, 2008
Pentagon To Shoot Down Falling Spy Satellite
In a real-life version of the movie "Armageddon," the U.S. military is going to attempt to shoot down a broken spy satellite before it crashes into Earth.
"The first objective will be bringing it down in an unpopulated area," said Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Second objective is to hit the tank, the hydrazine tank, and rupture it so we can off-gas the hydrazine as early as possible so the least amount of it returns to the Earth."
According to a CDC Web site, hydrazine is a hazardous substance used in rocket fuels. Contact with hydrazine can cause organ damage and cancer.
The government announced last month that the bus-size spy satellite had lost power and would fall back to Earth as soon as late February. At the time, the National Security Council said that "appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation."
The last large American satellite to crash back to Earth landed safely in the Indian Ocean in 1979.
Concerns about the 5,000-pound satellite's trajectory and the hazardous substances it contains prompted DOD's decision to intercept the object. "What we're attempting to do here is to intercept this just prior to it entering the Earth's atmosphere," Cartwright said at a DOD press briefing this afternoon. The military hopes to reduce by more than 50 percent the amount of debris that enters the atmosphere while also minimizing the risk to "other bodies in space," such as the international space station, Cartwright added.
The military will also have to factor in risks to aircraft. Cartwright said that DOD assessed those risks, along with the chances of successfully keeping most of the satellite from crashing into Earth, before arriving at the decision to intercept.
DOD, Homeland Security, NASA and other agencies will be coordinating the mission.
Posted at 3:29 PM
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