GlobalSecurity.org In the News

The Boston Globe February 15, 2008

Broken satellite will be shot down

US says reentry could release toxic fuel supply

By Bryan Bender

WASHINGTON - President Bush has ordered the Navy to shoot down a broken spy satellite hurtling toward Earth with a large supply of toxic fuel onboard, giving the Pentagon a chance to show off decades of controversial research into space weapons - and raising new concerns that it could effect an escalating military competition in outer space.

Bush made the decision this week only after his national security advisers concluded it was the safest way to prevent the spacecraft, which is carrying more than 1,000 pounds of deadly hydrazine, from endangering humans on the ground, military and government officials said yesterday.

"Our objective here was to reduce the risk," General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters during a briefing yesterday. He said the malfunctioning satellite "has no aerodynamic properties" that can be used to predict its trajectory.

Unlike other expired satellites that have reentered the atmosphere but can be controlled from the ground, Cartwright said, "Once [this satellite] hits the atmosphere, it tumbles, it breaks apart; it is very unpredictable."

The military plans to launch a missile from a ship just as the satellite is expected to enter the atmosphere, or about 130 miles up, Cartwright said. The military's intent, he said, is to force the minivan-size, 5,000-pound spacecraft - an advanced reconnaissance satellite - to break apart and come down safely in the Pacific Ocean or blow up the fuel tank before it enters the atmosphere, eliminating the hydrazine threat.

The unprecedented mission to shoot down an object hurtling toward Earth from space calls for three Navy Aegis destroyers positioned in the Pacific Ocean to fire a single Standard missile at the satellite and then be prepared to launch two backup missiles if the first shots miss. The Standard missiles are designed to stop enemy aircraft and missiles but have the range to reach the lower levels of space.

Experts in the Pentagon and at NASA predict that their best shot at the satellite will come within the next three or four days. Not long after that, however, the satellite will enter the atmosphere, likely break up, and then become nearly impossible to track accurately.

"It is a relatively small window," Cartwright said.

Officials said the launch will occur after Atlantis, the space shuttle currently in orbit on a mission to the International Space Station, returns to Earth, easing concerns that it could be damaged by satellite debris.

Meanwhile, the NASA administrator, Michael Griffin, said there will be special precautions taken to ensure the destruction of the satellite does not harm the space station. "We're conducting this with due regard to the safety of people in orbit," he said during the Pentagon briefing.

Coincidentally, Bush's decision was announced just days after Russia and China proposed a treaty to ban all weapons in space at a meeting of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. Currently, an international agreement called the Outer Space Treaty prohibits only space-based weapons of mass destruction, capable of wiping out large numbers of victims; the United States so far has resisted going further.

The United States is the only country known to be working on a space-based laser weapon, which such a treaty would outlaw. The proposed treaty, however, would ban only weapons based in space, not ground-based weapons that can reach space, according to specialists.

Nevertheless, the unusual mission sparked some fears yesterday that it could set back efforts at disarmament.

The last time the United States shot down a satellite was more than two decades ago, during a test of the Reagan-era "Star Wars" missile defense program. Last year, China sparked an international outcry when it tested its own specially designed antisatellite weapon.

Computer models showed that the Chinese test created more than 150,000 pieces of "space junk" - floating debris that could damage communications and other satellites upon which the telecommunications industry and the military depend.

"Keeping space from becoming a shooting gallery is a critically important goal," Michael Krepon, a space specialist at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington think tank, wrote in a report published yesterday.

But officials at the Pentagon, NASA, and the White House insist that the decision to shoot down the malfunctioning spy satellite is due to a unique set of circumstances, especially the danger the satellite poses if it crashes to Earth. They also pointed out that the Chinese test destroyed a satellite far higher in orbit and created much more space debris than US experts expect from the destruction of the spy satellite.

They insist that because the missile will intercept it just outside the earth's atmosphere, any satellite debris will fall harmlessly to the ground or quickly burn up from atmospheric friction as it falls.

"Other intercepts that have occurred have occurred substantially higher than the space station, as an example," said Griffin, noting that the Chinese hit a satellite orbiting more than 800 miles above the earth. "That means the debris is up there for 20 to 40 years," he said. "That will not be the case here."

Some specialists have questioned whether the Pentagon's true motive for destroying the satellite before reentry is to keep it out of enemy hands. But the Pentagon insists that if the satellite crashed to Earth, it would be too damaged to be of benefit to a US adversary.

"I buy that they are concerned about safety on the ground, but I don't buy that they are not concerned about the technology being exposed," said John Pike, a military space specialist at GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington think tank. "They want to avoid the possibility that this stuff will show up on Ebay."

Most details about the highly advanced satellite and its surveillance mission are classified. Launched by the top-secret National Reconnaissance Office in December 2006, the satellite malfunctioned almost immediately upon liftoff - the reason it has not burned off more of its propellant and cannot be controlled upon reentry.

If the satellite crashes with its fuel tank intact, the hydrazine could contaminate an area as large as two football fields with similar effects as chlorine gas, the officials said.

During World War II, German scientists used hydrazine to fuel the Messerchmitt, the first rocket-powered fighter plane. Aerospace technologists use the fuel to power thrusters for maneuvering satellites in space. The chemical is also used in fuel cells and in an explosive called Astrolite.

"It could, in fact, be deadly," Cartwright said.

"It's very, very unpredictable where it would hit."