Raw Vid ; Missile Launch From Ship And Strike.
WASHINGTON: A missile interceptor launched from a navy warship has struck a dying American spy satellite orbiting 130 miles over the Pacific Ocean, the Pentagon announced late Wednesday.
Officials cautioned that while early information indicated that the interceptor's "kill vehicle" had hit the satellite, it would be 24 hours before it could be determined whether the fuel tank with 1,000 pou
More..nds of toxic hydrazine had been destroyed as planned.
Even so, one official who received a late-night briefing on the mission expressed confidence that the impact had been so powerful that the fuel tank probably had been ruptured.
Completing a mission in which an interceptor designed for missile defense was used for the first time to attack a satellite, the Lake Erie, an Aegis-class cruiser, fired a single missile just before 10:30 p.m. Eastern time, and the missile hit the satellite as it traveled at more than 17,000 miles per hour, the Pentagon said in its official announcement.
"A network of land-, air-, sea- and spaced-based sensors confirms that the U.S. military intercepted a nonfunctioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite which was in its final orbits before entering the Earth's atmosphere," the statement said.
By early Wednesday, three navy warships were in position in the Pacific Ocean to launch the interceptors and to track the mission.
Radar and other tracking equipment, both in space and on the ground, were monitored at Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California, and at a space command headquarters in Colorado Springs, with control of the operation managed by the Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska.
Although the satellite circles the globe every 90 minutes, analysts pinpointed a single overhead pass each day that would offer the best chance of striking the satellite and then having half of the debris fall into the atmosphere in the next three orbits over water or less-populated areas of the Earth.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who left Washington on Wednesday for a week of meetings in Asia, had been empowered by President George W. Bush to issue the order to shoot down the satellite and gave the order several hours before the strike.
The many moving parts of a mission to shoot down a dying spy satellite with an antimissile interceptor were lined up earlier Wednesday after the space shuttle Atlantis returned to Earth, officials said.
The goal of the mission was to prevent the fuel tank from reaching Earth and spilling its hazardous contents in a populous area. In the event that any of the hydrazine fuel falls on a populated area, the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday issued directions to communities on how to deal with dangerous debris from the satellite.
Military officials said their goal had been to carry out the mission before March 1, when the satellite was expected to start skidding against the upper reaches of the atmosphere.
That initial friction would bump the satellite into a more unpredictable Earth orbit, even before it started a fiery descent through the atmosphere.
Providing new information about how the mission would be carried out, a senior military officer on Wednesday described the vessels, weapons and command structure for the operation
The senior military officer said the mission would be launched in daylight to take advantage of radar, heat-sensor tracking and visual tracking equipment. The navy had a window that lasted only tens of seconds as the satellite passed overhead, military officers said.
An Aegis cruiser, the Lake Erie, has two Standard Missile 3 rockets that were adapted to track the cold satellite, as opposed to the heated enemy warheads for which it was designed. A second ship, the destroyer Decatur, had a third missile as backup. Another navy destroyer, the Russell, sailed with the convoy for added tracking capabilities.
Separately, a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, dismissed suggestions that the operation had been designed to test the nation's missile defense systems or antisatellite capabilities or that the effort had been to destroy secret intelligence equipment.
"This is about reducing the risk to human life on Earth, nothing more," Whitman said.
The 5,000-pound satellite, roughly the size of a school bus, was managed by the National Reconnaissance Office and went dead shortly after it was launched in December 2006.
The FEMA document notes, "Any debris should be considered potentially hazardous, and first responders should not attempt to pick it up or move it."
Less..
Added: Feb 21 2008 In: news_politics,education
By: barnesy Premium 
- Views: 76449 |
- Votes: 10 |
- Recommendations: 21 |
- Comments: 218
