Washington; February 15, 2008 - The people should not be afraid of what would happen if the disabled 5,000-pound spy satellite falls down on their house, building, electric power house or any other vulnerable point like their TV Station, or the President House.

Of course, it is going to fall within just two weeks but it shall not fall on anything that can damage the property or life directly or indirectly.The Pentagon plans to shoot it down within the next two weeks, before it tumbles from orbit, because the rocket; fuel it carries could be a danger to the people..
 
The operation will be carried out from a Navy ship that will fire a missile modified for the task, which resembles shooting down a ballistic missile warhead as it begins to re-enter the atmosphere.

President Bush ordered the military to try to pick off the satellite because “there was a possibility of death or injury to human beings beyond that associated with the fall of satellites and other space object normally, if we can use that word,” a deputy national security adviser, James Jeffrey, said.

The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. James Cartwright, of the Marine Corps, said “a window of opportunity” to pick off the satellite before it enters Earth’s atmosphere will open in the next three or four days and last for seven or eight days. If the first shot misses, there should be time for a second attempt before the satellite enters the atmosphere, when it would be “next to impossible” to score a hit because of atmospheric disturbances, the general said.

If the satellite is not intercepted, it will tumble out of control into the atmosphere in early March, he said.

Many satellites have fallen harmlessly out of orbit during the space age, in part because they often break apart and the pieces generally burn upon re-entry. And when pieces do survive re-entry, they have usually landed in remote areas or in an ocean, simply because the Earth’s surface has more remote regions and seas than it does heavily populated areas.

What makes this case different is the toxic fuel on board, officials said.
But the test will also reopen delicate issues involving the development, testing and fielding of weapons that can be used to intercept ballistic missiles as well as satellites.

The operation involves the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and other agencies in addition to the Defense Department.

The ramifications of the operation are diplomatic as well as military and scientific, in part because the United States criticized China last year when Beijing used a defunct weather satellite as a target in a test of an antisatellite system. The United States has opposed calls for a treaty limiting antisatellite or other weapons in space.

After their test, the Chinese said that they had no intention of getting involved in a “space race,” and that their test had not been designed to intimidate. Under the Bush administration, the United States has asserted its need to protect its interests in space.

The United States shot down a satellite in September 1985, as a test of an antisatellite system under development. In that experiment, an F-15 Eagle fighter aircraft fired a missile armed with a “kill” vehicle that collided with the U.S. Solwind satellite.

Rather than use that approach, this time the Navy will make use of recent research aimed a fielding a naval defense against ballistic missiles, based on the Aegis radar system and modifications to the Standard Missile 3, widely deployed as an anti-aircraft missile.

The impending demise of the American spy satellite has been of some concern to rocket experts, who have speculated that the object may contain hydrazine fuel, which is typically used in thrusters for rocket maneuvers in space and would be hazardous to anyone who came into contact with it on the ground, should any of the substance not be consumed by the fierce heat of re-entry.

Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation,” Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said in a statement in late January, when the problem satellite was moving in a circular orbit about 170 miles above the Earth. In the previous month, its orbit had declined as much as 12 miles.

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