The Pentagon has decided that sometime within the next several days, the Navy will try to shoot a failing spy satellite from the sky.
The Los Angeles Times says:
Some experts theorized that the administration was influenced by
concern that classified components on the intelligence satellite could
fall into hostile hands. Denying that, Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright,
vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said any sensitive
instruments would burn on reentry.
"Once you go through the atmosphere and the heating and the burning,
that would not be an issue in this case," Cartwright said at a news
conference. "It would not justify using a missile to take it and break
it up further."
However, the government has never resorted to shooting down a disabled
spacecraft or satellite, despite dozens of crashes and reentries over
decades of spaceflight. Administration officials said this instance is
different because the satellite failed shortly after its launch in
December 2006, leaving almost all of its 1,000 pounds of hydrazine
rocket fuel frozen in the uncontrollable spacecraft.
Because of its size -- Cartwright compared it to a bus -- only half of
the craft is likely to burn on reentry. That means the fuel tank could
survive if it is not destroyed by the missile strike. Normally, aging
satellites -- their onboard fuel mostly consumed -- are steered into
the ocean at the end of their life. But with the spy satellite's power
and communications inoperable, it is tumbling, unguided, to Earth.
Learn more about space debris from the the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office.
