The U.S. Navy successfully blasted a wayward spy satellite with a heat-seeking missile over the Pacific Ocean Wednesday evening, a defense official told the Associated Press.
The bus-sized spacecraft — an old spy satellite — was targeted 130 miles (210 kilometers) above the Earth with an SM-3 missile. Full details about the satellite's destruction, however, are not yet available.
The Pentagon previously submitted orders to shoot it down because they said its fuel tank could survive atmospheric reentry and spew 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms) of toxic hydrazine gas over an area about the size of two football fields.
"If they do shoot at it, even if they hit it, there's just a 30 percent chance that the shrapnel connected by the intersection hits the hydrazine tank," said Geoffrey Forden, an MIT physicist and space expert, earlier this week. Whether or not the fuel tank was destroyed is not known at this time.
If the tank did survive reentry, Forden calculated the risks of it killing or injuring someone at 3.5 percent. But the political consequences of the attempted shoot-down, he explained, could be worse by further opening up the international arena for future anti-satellite tests and possible space conflicts.
"You have to weigh the chance of [the satellite] killing or injuring someone against legitimizing China's ASAT [anti-satellite] test," Forden said. "A three percent chance of killing or injuring someone is large, but the consequences of allowing China to go ahead...I still come down and say it's a bad idea.
Navy Hits Satellite With Heat-Seeking Missile
