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Thursday, February 14, 2008

Shooting Space Junk

posted by on February 14 at 11:23 AM

A broken 5,000 pound spy satellite is set to crash back to Earth sometime in early March. Fear not, though, because the U.S. has a plan:

The Pentagon is planning to shoot down a broken spy satellite expected to hit the Earth in early March, The Associated Press has learned. U.S. officials said Thursday that the option preferred by the Bush administration will be to fire a missile from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth’s atmosphere.

At the very least it will be good practice since, as this article from the BBC points out, there’s probably a million pieces of space junk currently orbiting the earth. The good news: all but 9,000 pieces of it are thought to be around the size of a tennis ball.

RSS icon Comments

1

Military industrial complex or not, that does sound pretty cool.

Posted by Anon | February 14, 2008 11:33 AM
2

Of course, at orbital speeds, a piece of space junk the size of a stick of chewing gum can rip clean through your expensive satellite.

Posted by Fnarf | February 14, 2008 11:34 AM
3

Is this actually a problem? Even given its size shouldn't it still burn up in the atmosphere? I suppose shooting down satellites is pretty sexy, but doesn't it smack of an escalation in space war.

If the pentagon shoots down satellites it sends a signal that the surveillance, intelligence and communication satellites of other nations are vulnerable. This could potentially lead to an arms race of space weaponry.

Posted by vooodooo84 | February 14, 2008 11:38 AM
4

ummmm....a tennis ball traveling thousands of miles an hour can still f*ck your sh%t up if you happen to be puttering around in, oh, i dunno, a decades-old space station. if i were up there, i don't think i would be thrilled that the proliferation of space junk has been restricted mostly to thousands of "tennis ball sized" pieces of debris. what say you, Science?

Posted by exiled in LA | February 14, 2008 11:39 AM
5

To me, "shoot down" sort of implies some large heavy object crashing into the Earth. So "shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth’s atmosphere" simply makes no sense. I assume they are trying to explode it into smaller pieces?

Posted by w7ngman | February 14, 2008 11:41 AM
6

Well, yeehaw?

Posted by *gong* | February 14, 2008 11:43 AM
7

Don't you understand? This is yet another excuse for Georgey boy to show how big his guns are!

Pretty lights in sky make Georgey dance and giggle!

Posted by Queen_of_Sleaze | February 14, 2008 11:45 AM
8

What a terrible idea. The Chinese recently destroyed a defunct satellite with a missile, and we were all over their case for it (which, these days, means minimal inconsequential grumbling and that's about it). The Chinese strike littered space with a shitload of (more) junk -- errant pieces of crap whizzing through space almost guaranteed to destroy whatever they might hit.

IIRC, the Chinese would be liable for any damage caused by debris left over from their missile strike. I don't see any reason why the U.S. wouldn't be liable under similar obligations -- somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

The risk of the satellite coming down over populated areas and causing any damage is infinitesimal. Keep in mind that the shuttle Columbia broke up almost entirely over Texas and no significant damage was done, recall that Skylab came down with incident,* and many other satellites have burned up no problemo.

This is just a thinly veiled tit-for-tat because the Chinese missile demonstration pissed us off. It's foolhardy, unwise dickwaving that only leads toward the further militarization of space, places US satellites at risk, and exposes us to liability should the debris hit anybody else's assets up there. Hell, if the Chinese were really crafty, they'd steer one of their unwanted satellites into our debris and cause a minor international incident.

What a horrible, stupid idea. Although I will agree with the first poster that it does sound pretty cool.

-Mike

*Okay, Skylab is rumored to have killed a jackrabbit in Australia when it came down, but I can't find any confirmation.

Posted by Mike | February 14, 2008 11:49 AM
9

@3

Yes it is a minor problem because the satellite weighs 3 -4 tons. There is a worry that part of it might get through the atmosphere and hit a populated area (1% chance of that, 25% chance of it hitting land). The other issue is, from a gov't perspective it is a spy satellite and I don't think they want pieces falling on someone elses territory.

I think the idea is to shoot it into smaller pieces right before it enters the atmosphere.

Posted by notonthehill | February 14, 2008 11:55 AM
10

@3 The reason they are going to shoot it is that the whole damned thing is on a trajectory to fall over the US and Canada and is too large to entirely burn up in the atmosphere. They hope the smaller peices, post blow-up, will burn up and not kill us groundlings.

@8, yes, everyone did raise a stink when the chinese showed they could kill satellites, which has now created a new space arms race. This case gives the US a good excuse to show what we can do as well.

The whole thing has been a debacle, since this particular satellite was our newest and most expensive spy satellite to date and it never worked and is falling to Earth because it never reached optimal orbit. Blowing it to pieces also means there won't be any pieces for interested parties to examine and copy.

Posted by inkweary | February 14, 2008 12:01 PM
11

"Keep in mind that the shuttle Columbia broke up almost entirely over Texas and no significant damage was done"

Well, I suppose that's true if by "no significant damage" you mean "except for one space shuttle and the seven crew members aboard".

Posted by COMTE | February 14, 2008 12:17 PM
12

Oh. I thought maybe you were talking about some primo dope. Dang.

Posted by shoot | February 14, 2008 12:52 PM
13

This is a really stupid idea. Retro rockets? Anybody at the Pentagon ever heard of those?

Posted by Greg | February 14, 2008 1:46 PM
14

Remember that North Korean missile test a ways back? Shooting it down with a flying laser?

Yeah, you'd have to hit a burning satellite in Earth's atmosphere and all, but couldn't the Airborne Laser be given the nod for this task?

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/

Posted by Lloyd Clydesdale | February 14, 2008 3:00 PM
15

Shooting a satellite shouldn't deorbit it in the same way as shooting down a plane; Nothing onboard need function in order for the wreck (or thousands of pieces) to keep going, going...

I do not know if somehow the test will attempt to deorbit the Sat by either 1)transferring enough retrograde momentum to the remains so that it accelerates its reentry or 2) blasting it into pieces with a higher aggregate drag, so that the reentry is accelerated.

What happens if the darn thing fragments into different vectors, some of which enter dispersed, elliptical orbits? Suddenly the problem is less manageable.

Unless there is info I'm not aware of, the idea is not good technically, and too expensive politically.

Posted by Mike | February 14, 2008 4:20 PM
16

@10: When you say, "This case gives the US a good excuse to show what we can do as well," in regards to a space arms race, I'm not sure if you're advocating further militarization of space, or just saying we're on the path to it. I certainly think that we could bow out of a space arms race without any appreciable risk to national security. Indeed, I think that spurring a space arms race is arguably more dangerous to us, as it encourages others to develop space-based weaponry that can be used against us.

If the satellite is on a path to break up over the US and Canada as you suggest, then I think we needn't be so worried about the prospect of sensitive debris winding up in the wrong hands.

@11 - Thanks for the catch; that is what I meant. The Columbia accident was a tragedy and a pretty egregious fuck-up on NASA's part. The shuttle is much larger than this satellite, which I would expect means a more incomplete break-up/burn-up. The shuttle also carries hydrazine propellant, which is supposedly one of the dangerous fuels on the satellite that the people in charge are worried about. Nobody on the ground was injured by hydrazine propellant or falling debris.

@15: You're absolutely right. The satellite is going to break into countless pieces, many of which are going to stay in space for a long, long time.

The only problem that a missile strike solves is the remote possibility that classified hardware will be revealed to the wrong party. This scenario presumes that (a) classified hardware survives re-entry, (b) the surviving hardware comes down on land and not sea, where it will presumably sink and be lost forever, (c) if it comes down on land, it is found, (d) the person who finds it is compelled to share the crash-landed hardware with the "bad guys," and (e) he also knows how to do so without getting busted.

I'll take my chances of getting hit on the head by an errant chunk of spy satellite rather than escalating an arms race, thanks.

Posted by Mike | February 14, 2008 5:44 PM
17

Our answer for everything these days is to shoot at it.

Posted by superyeadon | February 14, 2008 11:21 PM
18

@16, by us, I meant the US government which does things in our names whether we like it or not, though folks from other countries always blame each of us for them when we converse with them. I do not advocate an arms race.

Last night further news on the satellite reveals it is full of tons of frozen benzene based fuel which is incredibly toxic. Supposedly blowing it up while still in space will keep the stuff from falling in chunks into the atmosphere.

Posted by inkweary | February 15, 2008 12:26 PM
19

So what came down over northern Canada?
Was it a part of the satellite and there is a media blackout?
Or is it a chunk of frozen rock?

Posted by c.raincloud | February 18, 2008 7:59 AM

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