[southnews] Shooting down spysat may endanger space station Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:05:01 -0600 (CST) The planned destruction of a disabled US spy satellite will create hundreds of thousands of marble-sized fragments, some of which could strike the International Space Station (ISS), although experts are divided about the risk. Shooting down spysat may endanger space station * 12:02 15 February 2008 * NewScientist.com news service * Ker Than The planned destruction of a disabled US spy satellite will create hundreds of thousands of marble-sized fragments, some of which could strike the International Space Station (ISS), although experts are divided about the risk. The Pentagon cites concern about contamination from toxic hydrazine fuel as the main reason behind the decision to shoot down the satellite rather than let it disintegrate in the atmosphere. But the decision worries David Wright, co-director of the global security programme at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. "It sounds to me like a bad idea," Wright told New Scientist. "This satellite is about two-and-a-half times as massive as the Chinese satellite destroyed last year, so you would expect to get a lot more debris." Explosion risk The Chinese anti-satellite test, performed in January 2007, was conducted about 850 kilometres (528 miles) above the Earth, where the atmosphere is thin and objects experience less drag. Debris from the Chinese test is expected to remain in orbit for years or even centuries. In contrast, the current plan for shooting down the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) satellite involves firing a modified navy missile at the spacecraft while it is about 240 km (150 miles) above the Earth. The atmosphere is thick enough at that relatively low altitude that most of the debris will be dragged down and disintegrate in a matter of hours or days. However, Wright worries that some of the debris from the explosion could temporarily get kicked up to a higher orbit, where it could pose a threat to the ISS, which orbits the Earth at about 340 km (211 miles). Hydrazine threat "These high-energy explosions are very hard to describe and understand in detail," Wright says. "How certain are they about what the debris consequences are?" Donald Kessler, a retired manager of NASA's Orbital Debris Office at Johnson Space Center, also worries about the debris but thinks the possibility of contamination from hydrazine is worse. "When you're dealing with a chemical like that, it's a different ball game," Kessler told New Scientist. Max Meerman, a satellite engineer at the MDA Corporation in Vancouver, Canada, believes that concerns about debris are overblown. "The satellite will be slowed down when it flies into the missile, so most bits from the impact will slow down, rather than speed up, and re-enter [Earth's atmosphere] even quicker," he says. http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13328-shooting-down-spysat-may-endanger-space-station.html _______________________________________________ SATELLITE SHOOT DOWN NOTHING MORE THAN ANTI-SATELLITE TEST For Immediate Release Contact: Bruce Gagnon 207-443-9502 The planned Pentagon shoot down of the wayward U.S. military satellite is nothing more than an opportunity to test new Star Wars anti-satellite weapons (ASAT) technology says the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. "The Bush administration is magnifying the risk to justify the testing of new dangerous and provocative offensive space warfare technologies," says Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator of the Global Network, which is based in Maine. "At the time when we need to be constraining space debris-creating ASAT testing, this test will throw open the door to a new arms race in space." The Strategic Command's (StratCom) high-tech Global Operations Center, buried beneath Offutt AFB in Omaha, Nebraska, will play the lead role in coordinating the ASAT test. StratCom now heads all military space operations since merging with the U.S. Space Command in 2002. "The decision to destroy the American satellite does not look harmless as they try to claim, especially at a time when the U.S. has been evading negotiations on the limitation of an arms race in outer space," a Russian Defense Ministry statement has concluded. For many years Russia and China have gone to the United Nations General Assembly with a resolution calling for a treaty to ban all weapons in space. The U.S. and Israel have annually voted against the treaty while every other nation in the world supports such a new legal ban on space weapons. The U.S. aerospace industry says that Star Wars will be the largest industrial project in the history of the planet Earth. Global Network board member Stacey Fritz, Coordinator of No Nukes North in Alaska where so-called missile defense interceptors have been deployed says, "A culmination of events this month reveals the true direction of space weapons technology. China and Russia have formally proposed a new ban on space weapons on the heels of polls showing widespread public support for such a treaty in both the U.S. and Russia. Not only does the U.S. refuse to consider the ban, but also after denying for years that these systems have offensive capabilities, the rogue Bush administration proposes to demonstrate missile defense's anti-satellite technology. The doors of the Trojan horse are spilling open and the new arms race is on." Three U.S. Navy Aegis destroyers, outfitted with missile interceptors, will fire at the satellite as it falls back to Earth from positions just off Hawaii. These same Aegis ships are now being home ported by the Navy throughout the Asian-Pacific region giving the U.S. the ability to encircle China's coast. These Aegis ships could give the U.S. the ability to intercept China's twenty nuclear missiles that today are capable of reaching the west coast of the continental U.S. The Pentagon has been war-gaming a U.S. first-strike attack on China, set in 2016, for the past several years. In that attack the Aegis ships would negate China's nuclear retaliatory force by intercepting their missiles in the boost phase. The Global Network is made up of more than 140-affiliated peace groups around the world working to halt the nuclearization and weaponization of space. For more information see www.space4peace.org - END - Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 652 Brunswick, ME 04011 (207) 443-9502 http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com http://space4peace.blogspot.com (Blog)