http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/science/14cnd-satellite.htmlWASHINGTON — The Pentagon plans to shoot down a disabled 5,000-pound spy satellite because the rocket fuel it carries could be a danger to people, Pentagon officials said Thursday.
The operation will be carried out from a Navy ship that will fire a Standard Missile 3 anti-aircraft device, Gen. James C. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon briefing. Navy ships routinely carry missiles to shoot down aircraft, and the Pentagon will modify the missile or missiles to be fired at the satellite, Pentagon officials said.
President Bush ordered the military to try to pick off the satellite because “there was a possibility of death or injury to human beings beyond that associated with the fall of satellites and other space objects normally, if we can use that word,” a deputy national security adviser, James Jeffries, said.
General Cartwright, of the Marine Corps, said that “a window of opportunity” would open in the next three to four days to pick off the satellite before it enters Earth’s atmosphere, and that the Navy then would have seven to eight days to take up to two shots at the satellite, if necessary. If the satellite is not destroyed, it will tumble out of control into the atmosphere in early March, he said.
Many satellites have fallen harmlessly out of orbit during the space age, in part because they often break apart and the pieces generally burn upon re-entry. And when pieces do survive re-entry, they have usually landed in remote areas or in an ocean, simply because the Earth’s surface has more remote regions and seas than it does heavily populated areas.
What makes this case different is the presence of up to 1,000 pounds of hydrazine, the highly toxic fuel used in thrusters to control a satellite’s movements, and the likelihood that the fuel tanks could survive re-entry, the officials said.
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