U.S. will try to shoot down spy satellite gone bad
Otherwise, officials say, fuel in the craft could pose a health hazard if the satellite crashed into a populated area.
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has decided to try to shoot down a failing 5,000-pound spy satellite because the spacecraft's rocket fuel could turn into a toxic gas capable of causing deaths and injuries if it crashed in a populated area, officials said today.
The operation would be the first U.S. attempt to shoot down a satellite since Cold War-era military tests ended in the 1980s. Pentagon officials said the operation, to be carried out in the next several days, would use the same ships and missiles acquired for the Navy's nascent missile defense system.
The plan calls for firing a tactical missile at the satellite when it reaches a low orbit of about 130 nautical miles. Officials said Navy ships would attempt to shoot down the satellite from the northern Pacific Ocean.
Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the action was not intended to ensure that classified components on the craft were destroyed before hitting the ground, saying any sensitive instruments would be destroyed when the satellite reentered Earth's atmosphere.
"There's some question about the classified side of this," Cartwright said at a Pentagon news conference announcing the decision. "Once you go through the atmosphere and the heating and the burning, that would not be an issue in this case. It would not justify using a missile to take it and break it up further."
Military commanders conferred with NASA officials to ensure the operation didn't interfere with the orbiting International Space Station or space shuttle Atlantis. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said the risk posed to either one by the destruction of the satellite was negligible.
Dozens of orbiters and spacecraft have crashed into the atmosphere in recent decades, but the U.S. government has never felt it necessary to shoot one down.
James Jeffries, an assistant to President Bush and deputy national security advisor, said the difference this time was the satellite's fuel tank, which holds an estimated 1,000 pounds of hydrazine-based rocket fuel, used to power motors that alter the satellite's course.
In cases of controlled descents, the fuel can be burned off before reentry. But in the case of the errant spy satellite, ground controllers lost all communications shortly after it was launched in 2006, and the fuel tank remains full. U.S. officials were concerned that the fuel tank could survive reentry and that a crash landing in a populated area could disperse the hydrazine, which causes deadly effects similar to ammonia or chlorine.
