After all the hand-wringing about what's going to happen to the U.S.'s broken, poisonous satellite on track to crash into earth, it looks the military is going to go ahead and do the Hollywood thing after all and blow it out of the sky. Or at least, they're going to try.
Right now, the military has a two-week window in which to shoot down the school bus-sized satellite; after that point, it would begin to break apart and tumble down into the earth's atmosphere, depositing its half-ton of frozen, hazardous hydrazene rocket fuel in an unknown place. Because the satellite circles the earth 16 times a day, we'll have a second and maybe even a third chance to hit it if we miss on the first blast.
The plan is to use ship-based anti-ballistic missile weaponry to take out the busted satellite, which, um, hasn't exactly been done before. If it works, it stands to serve not only as a way to take out a potentially dangerous piece of space junk, but also a powerful proof-of-concept for the U.S.'s antisatellite capability.
Continue reading 'Asteroid practice: U.S. plans to shoot down errant spy satellite' >
