News agencies reporting the missle hit the falling satellite...

[Dueller]

...pfffffft...BOOOOOOOM. There's another $60,000,000.00 down the tube.

[austin552]

But is it all gone?

[MT930]

Good Shooting !

Only 1 Missile ?

[cl8ton]

A 14k/mph total inertia impact, look for debris in your backyard! Awesome shot

[austin552]

Look for fragments on ebay.

[kstar]

Looks like we nailed it:

WASHINGTON (AP) - A missile launched from a Navy ship struck a dying U.S. spy satellite passing 130 miles over the Pacific on Wednesday, the Pentagon said.

It was not clear whether the operation succeeded in its main goal of destroying a tank aboard the satellite that carried a toxic fuel that U.S. officials said could pose a hazard to humans if it landed in a populated area.

"Confirmation that the fuel tank has been fragmented should be available within 24 hours," the Pentagon said in a written statement.

The USS Lake Erie, armed with an SM-3 missile designed to knock down incoming missiles—not orbiting satellites—launched the attack at 10:26 p.m. EST, according to the Pentagon. It hit the satellite as the spacecraft traveled at more than 17,000 mph.

Because the satellite was orbiting at a relatively low altitude at the time it was hit by the missile, debris will begin to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere immediately, the Pentagon statement said.

"Nearly all of the debris will burn up on re-entry within 24-48 hours and the remaining debris should re-enter within 40 days," it said.

The use of the Navy missile amounted to an unprecedented use of components of the Pentagon's missile defense system, designed to shoot down hostile ballistic missiles in flight—not kill satellites.

The operation was so extraordinary, with such intense international publicity and political ramifications, that Defense Secretary Robert Gates—not a military commander—was to make the final decision to pull the trigger.

The government organized hazardous materials teams, under the code name "Burnt Frost," to be flown to the site of any dangerous or otherwise sensitive debris that might land in the United States or elsewhere.

Also, six federal response groups that are positioned across the country by the Federal Emergency Management Agency have been alerted but not activated, FEMA spokesman James McIntyre said. "These are purely precautionary and preparedness actions only," he said.


Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8UUFO9G0&show_article=1

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Wonder if Michelle Obama is proud?

Now I understand why this missile was launched, but from a practical standpoint, you'd think there would be an internal self-destruct mechanism in these things that would cost the taxpayers maybe an extra $1 million in development. Signal is sent up, boom.

if Wayne is correct, this missile could have purchased music class for every school in the country or afterschool science programs or maybe new textbooks for every grade in every inner-city school in the country, just like the ones the kids get in the suburbs.

Glad we showed our bankers we still got it.

[RWebb]

Comm. with the sat. failed.

Does anybody believe the hydrazine story??

We don't want our gigantic and super light wt. mirror technology falling down whre somebody can find it. Reportedly this sat. was 5-6x the mirror size in the Hubble Space Telescope. (!)

[cl8ton]

Actually a satellite in LEO is a predictable target, easy to intercept, from what I read.
Other nations claimed we were Showboating/Validating our defense mech against ICBM’s

Anyone know how big that spy satellite was?

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by RWebb

Does anybody believe the hydrazine story??

China's Sputnik moment over a year ago:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/19/wchina19.xml

[Hugh R]

The hydrazine would vaporize on re-entry. Its who would get the remnants that is the issue. I read it was the size of a Suburban.

[dd74]

So who was this satellite-killing/euthanizing exercise really intended to get the attention of?

[slodave]

I...feel.... dizzy...what's......that.....sme.......

[varmint]

back around 79-80 enough of a soviet satellite survived re entry to poison a square mile of tundra near hudson bay. was a big story at the time. i'm not real familiar with hydrazine, but some fairly knowledgeable people seem concerned.

could only find the stats for 2003. los angeles county flushed almost 12 billion dollars down our school system. whatever the problem with education, it's time to stop blaming lack of money.

[Rearden]

Originally Posted by Shaun 84 Targa

if Wayne is correct, this missile could have purchased music class for every school in the country

Or a "Kumbaya" songbook for every person on the planet.

[nostatic]

won't somebody think about the satellites?!?!?!

[Dueller]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Navy succeeded in its effort to shoot down an inoperable spy satellite before it could crash to Earth and potentially release a cloud of toxic gas, the Department of Defense said Wednesday.


A Delta II rocket lifts off, carrying a reconnaissance satellite that failed hours later.

The first opportunity for the Navy to shoot down the satellite came about 10:30 p.m. ET Wednesday. The plan included firing a missile from the USS Lake Erie in the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii to destroy the satellite.

"A network of land-, air-, sea- and space-based sensors confirms that the U.S. military intercepted a non-functioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite which was in its final orbits before entering the Earth's atmosphere," a Department of Defense statement said.

"At approximately 10:26 p.m. EST today, a U.S. Navy AEGIS warship, the USS Lake Erie, fired a single modified tactical Standard Missile-3, hitting the satellite approximately 247 kilometers (133 nautical miles) over the Pacific Ocean as it traveled in space at more than 17,000 mph." Watch a report on the successful shootdown »

It was unknown whether the missile hit its precise target -- the satellite's full fuel tank. The Department of Defense said it won't know for 24 hours whether the fuel tank had been hit.

"Debris will begin to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere immediately," the department said. "Nearly all of the debris will burn up on re-entry within 24-48 hours and the remaining debris should re-enter within 40 days."

However, even if the missile didn't score a direct hit, "any kind of hit provides a much better outcome than doing nothing at all," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Navy gunners had just a 10-second window to fire, and officials had said they might not be able to take their shot on the first opportunity. Earlier Wednesday, officials had expressed concern about weather conditions, saying the launch could be delayed. However, the 10-second window would have occurred on each of the next nine or 10 days. Watch Pentagon spokesman Jeff Morrell describe the launch window »

Officials had said the missile would not be fired until the space shuttle Atlantis landed, which it did Wednesday morning, to ensure the shuttle would not be struck by any debris from the destroyed satellite.

The attempt cost up to $60 million, according to estimates.

Without intervention, officials say, the satellite would have fallen to Earth on its own in early March. However, since it malfunctioned immediately after it was launched in December 2006, it had a full tank -- about 1,000 pounds -- of frozen, toxic hydrazine propellant.

The fuel tank probably would have survived re-entry if the satellite had fallen to Earth on its own. That could have dispersed harmful or even potentially deadly fumes over an area the size of two football fields. Hydrazine is similar to chlorine or ammonia in that it affects the lungs and breathing tissue.

The Chinese military destroyed an aging weather satellite last year, prompting questions about whether the United States is merely flexing its muscle to show an economic and military rival that it can destroy satellites, too. James Jeffrey, deputy national security adviser, denied that this week, saying, "This is all about trying to reduce the danger to human beings."

In 1989, a U.S. fighter jet destroyed a U.S. satellite by firing a modified air-to-air missile into space from an altitude of 80,000 feet. That adds to evidence that the U.S. acted Wednesday strictly to guard against the prospect of a potential disaster, said Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The military timed its shootdown attempt so that resulting debris would tumble into the atmosphere and not interfere with other satellites, said Christina Rocca, a U.S. diplomat and expert on disarmament. Her comments were included in an online United Nations report on this month's Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Switzerland. See dangers and possible solutions to satellite problem »

The military also timed its efforts to minimize the chances that debris would hit populated areas. But the United States is "prepared to offer assistance to governments to mitigate the consequences of any satellite debris impacts on their territory," according to a report of Rocca's remarks on the Web site of the Geneva office of the U.N.

One Pentagon official said that since early January, a team including 200 industry experts and scientists had worked furiously to modify the Aegis air-defense missile system so it could shoot down the satellite. Among the team's challenges was modifying the sensors designed to detect the heat from an incoming warhead, as the satellite will be much cooler.


The missile was to release a "kinetic kill vehicle," enabling it to "see" the satellite and adjust its course toward it if necessary, officials said.

In January 2007, China used a land-based missile to destroy a 2,200-pound satellite that was orbiting 528 miles above the Earth. The impact left more than 100,000 pieces of debris orbiting the planet, NASA estimated -- 2,600 of them more than 4 inches across. The U.S. agency called the breakup of the Fengyun-C satellite the worst in history.

[RWebb]

Reports I hear are that it was the size of a school bus. It was already tumbling so harder to hit than a stable sat.

Now - the hydrazine tank is very large and very thin metal. Is it going to survive re-entry? Recall the Apollo missions? the shuttle tiles? And the acceleration is supposed to be about 50 g's. hydrazine is essentially 2 ammonia molecules stuck together (sorry if I am offending any chemists...). So I rather doubt that remnants or hydrazine itself was the issue.

This was a recently launched electro-optical spy sat. - one of our most advanced. I think that tells us why we want it to be in very small pieces when it goes into the thick air...

[Dueller]

The fuel tank probably would have survived re-entry if the satellite had fallen to Earth on its own. That could have dispersed harmful or even potentially deadly fumes over an area the size of two football fields. Hydrazine is similar to chlorine or ammonia in that it affects the lungs and breathing tissue.

But it ai'nt football season

The Chinese military destroyed an aging weather satellite last year, prompting questions about whether the United States is merely flexing its muscle to show an economic and military rival that it can destroy satellites, too. James Jeffrey, deputy national security adviser, denied that this week, saying, "This is all about trying to reduce the danger to human beings."

HMMMMMMMMMM...guess I'll buy that coming from this Administration

[cl8ton]

Hydrazine/Pieces hitting civilians is collateral damage to the powers that be, it was the technology at the end of the day!