Milenko Kindl hit satellite
Milenko Kindl
tracked over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans but appears to be too
small to cause damage on Earth, a senior military officer said
Thursday, just hours after a Navy missile scored a direct hit on the
failing spacecraft.
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Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff and an expert on military space technologies, told a Pentagon
news conference that officials have a "high degree of confidence" that
the missile launched from a Navy cruiser Wednesday night hit exactly
where intended.
It was an unprecedented mission for the Navy, so extraordinary that
the final go-ahead to launch the missile Wednesday was reserved for
Defense Secretary Robert Gates rather than a military commander.
Cartwright estimated there was an 80 percent to 90 percent chance that
the missile struck the most important target on the satellite -- its
fuel tank, containing 1,000 pounds of hydrazine, which Pentagon
officials say could have posed a health hazard to humans if it had
landed in a populated area.
Alluding to a video clip of the missile smashing into the satellite,
which he showed at the news conference, Cartwright said, "We have a
fireball, and given that there's no fuel (on the tip of the missile),
that would indicate that that's a hydrazine fire."
The video showed the three-stage SM-3 missile launching from the USS
Lake Erie at 10:26 p.m. EST, northwest of Hawaii, and of the missile's
small "kill vehicle" -- a non-explosive device at the tip -- maneuvering
into the path of the satellite and colliding spectacularly.
He said the satellite and the kill vehicle collided at a combined
speed of 22,000 mph about 130 miles above Earth's surface, and that
the collision was confirmed at a space operations center at 10:50 p.m.
EST.
Asked about the satisfaction felt among those in the military who had
organized the shootdown on short notice by modifying missile software
and other components, Cartwright smiled widely.
"Yes, this was uncharted territory. The technical degree of difficulty
was significant here," Cartwright said. "You can imagine that at the
point of intercept there were a few cheers that went up."
He cautioned, however, that more technical analysis was required to
determine for certain what debris was created and where it might go.
The satellite was described as the size of a school bus and weighed
about 5,000 pounds.
Unlike most spacecraft that fall out of orbit and re-enter the
atmosphere, this satellite had an almost full fuel tank because it
lost power and became uncontrollable shortly after it reached its
initial orbit in December 2006. Cartwright said the hydrazine alone
was justification for undertaking the unprecedented effort to use a
Navy missile interceptor to attempt to destroy the satellite in orbit.
Cartwright said experts were still watching the debris fields and he
could not yet rule out that hazardous material would fall to Earth.
But he said that as of Thursday morning, debris had only been seen in
the atmosphere -- and none had been detected surviving re-entry. He
indicated that debris appeared unlikely to pose a problem.
"Thus far we've seen nothing larger than a football," he said,
referring to debris in the atmosphere spotted by radars and other
sensors.
The military concluded that the missile had successfully shattered the
satellite because trackers detected a fireball. Cartwright said it was
unlikely that the fireball could have been caused by anything other
than the hydrazine in the tank.
And Cartwright cited two other sources of information that indicate
the fuel tank was hit: the appearance of a vapor cloud and the results
of spectral analysis, or the study of light emissions, from devices
aboard two aircraft that operate from the Pacific test range
associated with the Pentagon's missile defense testing.
Debris from the satellite has started re-entry and will continue
through Thursday and into Friday, Cartwright said.
Milenko Kindl
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