Navy missile hits failing spy satellite

Navy missile hits failing spy satellite

The first shot strikes its target. But officials say they don't know whether the fuel tank was destroyed.
By Peter Spiegel, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 21, 2008

HONOLULU -- The Navy hit a failed intelligence satellite speeding 133 miles above the Earth with a three-stage missile on the first try Wednesday, a shot the Pentagon hopes destroyed the spacecraft's fuel tank filled with 1,000 pounds of potentially toxic gas.

The missile, shot from the cruiser Lake Erie as it sat in the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii, came just as the window for the operation opened at 7:26 p.m. Pacific time. While the Pentagon said in a statement that it would take 24 hours to be certain the fuel tank was punctured, initial indications were that it had been hit.

The Navy waited until the space shuttle Atlantis landed Wednesday morning before moving into position to fire the missile. Planners determined that the best time to attempt the shot was late afternoon local time, when the satellite would have had maximum exposure to the sun, warming it up enough for the heat-seeking "kill vehicle" atop the missile to find the cold, tumbling satellite.

The interceptor was not armed with explosives, relying on the high-speed impact to do its work.

Even if the fuel tank of the spy satellite was not destroyed, officials said, any hit would reduce the risk of danger to humans. The 5,000-pound satellite is so big that only half of it was expected to burn up on reentry. But the missile strike probably broke it up into smaller pieces that will be destroyed before entering the Earth's atmosphere.

A senior defense official reported that observers monitoring the satellite saw what appeared to be an explosion, indicating the fuel tank was hit.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-satellite21feb21,1,6757439.story?ctrack=3&cset=true

I'm sure it will be specTACular!

to satellites, to innocent people, he just loves it.