The Pentagon used a missile to shoot down the satellite
The US is confident that its shooting down of a disabled spy satellite with a missile managed to destroy its potentially toxic fuel tank.
Marine Gen James Cartwright said there was a 80-90% chance that the satellite’s tank had been destroyed.
Officials were worried its hydrazine fuel could do harm, but it is not yet known if the fuel tank was destroyed.
A fire ball, vapour cloud and spectral analysis indicating the presence of hydrazine all indicated that the tank had been hit, he told reporters.
The operation has been criticised by China and Russia.
“We’re very confident that we hit the satellite,” Gen Cartwright said at a Pentagon briefing hours after the missile was fired.
“We also have a high degree of confidence that we got the tank.”
It would take another 24-48 hours for officials to confirm whether the operations had been completely successful, he said.
BROKEN SATELLITE
Owner: National Reconnaissance Office
Mission: Classified
Launched: 14 Dec 2006
Weight: 2,300 kg (5,000lbs)
1,134kg (2,500lbs) could survive re-entry
Carrying hydrazine thruster fuel
Gen Cartwright said he could not rule out that hazardous material might fall to earth, but said there was no evidence of this happening so far.
He added that officials would continue to track debris falling over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans over the next two days.
“Thus far we’ve seen nothing larger than a football,” he said.
The satellite, USA 193, was struck 153 nautical miles (283 km) above earth by an SM-3 missile fired from a warship in waters west of Hawaii.
Arms race?
Operatives had only a 10-second window to hit the satellite, which went out of control shortly after it was launched in December 2006.
The missile needed to pierce the bus-sized satellite’s fuel tank, containing more than 450kg (1,000lbs) of toxic hydrazine, which was otherwise expected to survive re-entry.
Launch of National Reconnaissance Office satellite on December 14 2006 from Vandenberg Air Force Base (USAF/Michael Stonecypher)
USA 193 lost control shortly after launch on a Delta II rocket
Russia suspects the operation was a cover to test anti-satellite technology under the US missile defence programme.
The US denies the operation was a response to an anti-satellite test carried out by China last year, which prompted fears of a space arms race.
US officials had said that without an attempt to destroy the fuel tank, and with the satellite’s thermal control system gone, the fuel would have been frozen solid, allowing the tank to resist the heat of re-entry.
If the tank were to have landed intact, it could have leaked toxic gas over a wide area - harming or killing humans if inhaled, officials had warned.
“The intent here was to preserve human life… it was the hydrazine we were after,” Gen Cartwright said on Thursday.
The US has also denied that it shot down the satellite to prevent parts of it from falling into the hands of foreign powers.
The operation went ahead hours after the space shuttle Atlantis landed, removing it as a safety issue for the military.
The satellite - believed by some commentators to be a radar imaging reconnaissance satellite - was passing about 130 nautical miles (250km) over the Pacific.
Earlier the military said it would use an SM-3 missile fired from the cruiser USS Lake Erie, which is posted on the western side of Hawaii along with the destroyers USS Decatur and USS Russell.
But it is not yet known how successful the operation was - the missile needed to pierce the bus-sized satellite’s fuel tank, containing more than 450kg (1,000lbs) of toxic hydrazine, which would otherwise be expected to survive re-entry.
The Pentagon said confirmation that the fuel tank has been hit should be available within 24 hours.
US officials said without an attempt to destroy the fuel tank, and with the satellite’s thermal control system gone, the fuel would now be frozen solid, allowing the tank to resist the heat of re-entry.
If the tank were to land intact, it could leak toxic gas over a wide area - harming or killing humans if inhaled, officials had warned.
Debris
Officials expect that over 50% of the debris will fall to Earth within the first 15 hours after the strike - or within its first two revolutions of Earth.
Launch of National Reconnaissance Office satellite on December 14 2006 from Vandenberg Air Force Base (USAF/Michael Stonecypher)
USA 193 lost control a few hours after launch on a Delta II rocket. Left to its own devices, about half of the spacecraft would have been expected to survive the blazing descent through the atmosphere, scattering debris in a defined “corridor” which runs across the Earth’s surface.
Professor Richard Crowther, a space debris expert with the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), said that if struck with the missile, about 25% of USA 193 is likely to survive the fall to Earth.
“The smaller the debris is the more likely you are to get burn-through. So if you fragment something before re-entry, less mass will survive to hit the Earth“.
Russian suspicion
But Russia’s defence ministry has effectively branded the US operation a cover for testing an anti-satellite weapon.
The Russian defence ministry argued that various countries’ spacecraft had crashed to Earth in the past, with many using toxic fuel on board, but that this had never before merited “extraordinary measures”.
A spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry in Beijing, Liu Jianchao, said China was concerned about the “possible damage to security in outer space and to other countries”.
“We demand that the US… swiftly brief the international community with necessary data and information in time, so that relevant countries can take preventative measures,” he said.
Last year, China carried out a test using a ground-based ballistic missile to destroy a satellite in space, prompting international alarm and fears of a space arms race.
On Tuesday, a US State Department spokesman stressed that the action was meant to protect people from the hazardous fuel and was not a weapons test.
The US government has also denied claims that the main aim of the operation was to destroy secret components on USA 193.
Officials say classified parts would be burned up in the atmosphere and, in any case, that would not be a reason for shooting down the satellite.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that the Pentagon will share whatever information it can with China about a crippled U.S. spy satellite that was shot down by the U.S. military.
China said it was monitoring potential dangers from the shoot-down and urged the United States to provide more information.
During a visit to the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii, Gates said he shared some information with China beforehand, but he was not specific about what was or what would be shared.
If it had not been hit by the missile, the malfunctioning satellite would have fallen out of space and toward Earth in early March.
Tags: hydrazine fuel, National Reconnaissance Office satellite, USS Lake Erie