The U.S. Navy shot down the dying satellite. And they said it couldn’t be done!
Pentagon officials said they think a Navy missile scored a direct hit on the fuel tank of an errant spy satellite late Wednesday, eliminating a toxic threat to people on Earth.
“We have a high degree of confidence we got the tank,” Marine Gen. James Cartwright said at a Pentagon briefing Thursday morning.
A fireball and a vapor cloud seen after the strike appeared to indicate the toxic hydrazine fuel had been destroyed, he said. The missile that struck the satellite did not carry an explosive warhead.
Cartwright also said the satellite seemed to be reduced to small pieces.
“Thus far, we see nothing larger than a football,” he said.
Here’s the way-cool video.
To be technically accurate, they did not really “shoot down” the satellite. The orbit had decayed to the point that it would have crashed anyway. The re-entry was not hastened by the impact. They just blew it into little peices to make sure it all burned up on re-entry rather than landing as one big, poisonous chunk.
I wonder why they don’t just put self-destruct mechanisms in them if they’re that dangerous.
Because self-destruct mechanisms are heavy, and satellites are expensive enough already without the added fuel costs (which rise exponentially with mass).
And because any safe form of self-destruct mechanism would require that the satellite be functional…and if it had been functional, they would have simply deorbited it, rather than having to shoot it.
Catch 22.
Beautiful!
Space…
Big explosion…
And angering the Eastern Bloc…
Reagan would be proud.
Hell, the only way it could have gone any better was if Slim Pickens had been riding that thing.
Tom Frank,
“they would have simply deorbited it, rather than having to shoot it down.”
Not to quibble, but they could not just de-orbit it. In this case, it was already “self de-oribiting”, but they were still afraid a big enough chunk would get to the ground to cause harm. So, as it fell, they chose to “disassemble it with extreme prejudice”.
I see what you mean about the thing having to be controllable though. But even given that and the extra weight, one would think it would still be less expensive to have an on-board solution rather than a ground based solution.
Unless, of course, you already have the ground based solution for another reason. Hmmmm…