Missile Strikes Wayward Satellite, Pentagon Says
WASHINGTON — An American missile smashed a disabled spy satellite that was headed for earth and the military is tracking the debris as it falls over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Pentagon said today.
US Navy/AP
A single modified tactical Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) launches from the U.S. Navy AEGIS cruiser USS Lake Erie yesterday, successfully impacting a non-functioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite approximately 247 kilometers (133 nautical miles) over the Pacific Ocean.
The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General James Cartwright, told a Pentagon press conference today that he couldn't rule out that hazardous material would fall to the earth.
"Thus far we've seen nothing larger than a football," he said.
General Cartwright said officials also "have a high degree of confidence" — though are not ready to say for sure — that the missile launched from a Navy ship near Hawaii yesterday struck the satellite's fuel tank. Officials said the toxic hydrazine fuel in the tank would have caused a hazard had it fallen to earth.
The military concluded that the missile had successfully shattered the satellite because trackers detected a fire ball, which seemed to indicate the exploding hydrazine in the tank. A vapor cloud also suggested the destruction of the fuel, he said.
He said officials are 80% sure that the tank was breached and the hazardous material was vented off.
