US to shoot down wayward spy satellite, but no debris to hit RP

CLARK FIELD, Pampanga – Three US Navy ships will attempt to shoot down tomorrow a malfunctioning 5,000-pound US spy satellite loaded with poisonous fuel over the Pacific Ocean, west of Hawaii, but an astronomy enthusiast allayed fears that debris from it would hit the Philippines.

“That spy satellite is small compared to the Skylab,” astronomy enthusiast Dr. Armand Lee, president of the Astronomy Students Association of the Philippines, told The STAR yesterday.

Lee was referring to the Skylab, which created a furor in 1979 when it malfunctioned and entered the Earth’s atmosphere, although no one was hurt when it scattered debris over the Indian Ocean and a sparsely populated region in Western Australia.

“The US is planning to hit (the satellite) with a missile before it enters the atmosphere,” he said.

The US government has issued a formal notice, warning ships and planes to stay clear of a large area of the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii, but no one from the Philippine Coast Guard could say whether the warning has reached Philippine maritime authorities.

Reports from the US Navy said three of its Aegis destroyers have been 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 missiles are designed to stop enemy aircraft and missiles but have the range to reach the lower levels of space.

Maj. Allan Ballesteros, spokesman of the ongoing Balikatan military joint exercise which started here last Monday, said US ships docking at Subic Bay brought some 500 US soldiers for the exercise, but could not say immediately if any of the vessels are US Navy Aegis ships tasked to hit the satellite in the Pacific Ocean.

US President George Bush ordered the shooting down of the awry satellite, referred to as USA 193, after his national security advisers concluded that 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.

A CNN report said, “If the satellite falls to Earth it could leave a cloud of fumes the size of two football fields.”

International news agencies quoted Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, as saying that “our objective here was to reduce the risk.” 

He said US Navy plans to launch a missile from a ship just as the satellite is expected to enter the atmosphere, or about 130 miles up, so as to break the satellite apart and allow its debris to land safely in the Pacific Ocean or blow up its fuel tank before it enters the atmosphere, eliminating the hydrazine threat.

Pentagon officials have been quoted as saying that without intervention, the satellite would come down on its own in early March in Poland. 

For his part, National Aeronautics and Space Administration administrator Michael Griffin was quoted as saying, “If we miss, nothing changes. If we shoot and barely touch it, the satellite is just barely in orbit” and would still burn up in the atmosphere.

Florida Division of Emergency Management representative Dave Halstead said the US federal government lost control of the US193 on the same day it was launched in December 2006, after a malfunction.

Real-time tracking of the US193 spy satellite can be found at www.n2yo.com.