U.S. missile hits spy satellite

WASHINGTON — A Navy missile soaring about 150 miles above the Pacific smashed a dying and potentially deadly U.S. spy satellite Wednesday and probably destroyed a tank carrying 1,000 pounds of toxic fuel, officials said.

Officials had expressed cautious optimism that the missile would hit the 5,000-pound satellite, which was the size of a school bus. But they were less certain of hitting the smaller, more problematic fuel tank, whose contents posed what Bush administration officials deemed a potential health hazard to humans if it landed intact.

In announcing that the Navy missile struck the satellite, the Pentagon said, "Confirmation that the fuel tank has been fragmented should be available within 24 hours."

It made no mention of early indications, but a defense official said later that officials monitoring the collision saw what appeared to be an explosion, indicating the fuel tank was hit.

The USS Lake Erie, armed with an SM-3 missile designed to knock down incoming missiles — not orbiting satellites — launched the attack at 7:26 p.m. PST, according to the Pentagon. It hit the satellite about three minutes later as the spacecraft traveled in polar orbit at more than 17,000 mph.

Because the satellite was orbiting at a relatively low altitude when the missile hit it, debris began to re-enter Earth's atmosphere immediately, the Pentagon statement said.

"Nearly all of the debris will burn up on re-entry within 24-48 hours, and the remaining debris should re-enter within 40 days," it said.

The use of the Navy missile amounted to an unprecedented use of components of the Pentagon's missile-defense system, designed to shoot down hostile ballistic missiles in flight — not kill satellites.

The operation was so extraordinary, with such intense international publicity and political ramifications, that Defense Secretary Robert Gates — not a military commander — made the final decision to launch.

The government organized hazardous-materials teams under the code name "Burnt Frost" to be flown to the site of any dangerous or otherwise sensitive debris that might land in the United States or elsewhere. Among them was the Washington State Urban Search and Rescue Task Force (WATF1), whose 70-person team is on standby and, if activated, could be ready to respond within four hours, a spokeswoman said.

In the buildup to the shoot-down, a chorus of critics expressed concern that the action could provoke a military space race or damage U.S. satellites or the international space station.

The United States' decision to destroy the satellite has raised concerns from scientists, historians and national-security experts who worry that it's a big step toward the weaponization of space.

"It will be very difficult to convince other countries that they shouldn't develop a similar anti-satellite capability," Laura Grego, an astrophysicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists Global Security Program, said before the launch.

Space rivals such as Russia and China suspect the U.S. action was a cover for testing an anti-satellite, or ASAT, weapon rather than the peaceful mission Pentagon officials claimed. Russia's Defense Ministry said the United States was looking for an excuse to test its "defense system's capability to destroy other countries' satellites."

The Pentagon said last week that it wanted to destroy the satellite to prevent its hydrazine tank from crashing to Earth and spreading a deadly cloud of toxic gas.

"This operation is designed to alleviate a threat to human beings on this planet," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said.

But even if the tank had landed intact, it had about a 3 percent chance of killing or injuring anyone, largely because it likely would have landed in the ocean, said Geoffrey Forden, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"It's not a stupid idea, but it's a bad idea," Forden said.

Although 3 percent is a relatively high number, he said, it presumes the tank will land intact — which is questionable. The potential downside, he said, is triggering a military space race.

Since President Reagan launched "Star Wars" in the 1980s, the missile-defense program has been eyed with suspicion by people who think its intent is to develop an offensive technology to control space. Using an SM-3 interceptor, which was designed to defend against medium-range ballistic missiles, will only intensify those suspicions, some scientists said.

"Given that the Russians and Chinese have long been paranoid that the U.S. missile-defense program is a cover for offensive-space-control weapons, the use of a missile-defense interceptor to take down the satellite only serves to confirm their worst fears," said Theresa Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense Information, a Washington-based think tank.

The likely result, she said, will be the start of an anti-satellite missile race, with Russia and China accelerating development and testing of their own systems.

China shocked the world last year when it used a newly developed anti-satellite missile to destroy a defunct weather satellite, the Feng Yun 1-C, orbiting 528 miles above Earth. The resulting blast sent a wave of debris hurtling through space at more than 6 miles a second.

The test unnerved U.S. defense officials and provoked international condemnation.

Scientists worry that destruction of the satellite will send even more debris into space. Controlling debris is crucial to the sustainable use of space, said David Wright, a co-director and senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Pentagon and NASA officials insisted that because the missile intercepted the spy satellite close to Earth's atmosphere, most debris would quickly burn up from atmospheric friction.

But there were doubts.

Just to be safe, the Pentagon held off on its launch until the space shuttle Atlantis, which had been on a construction mission to the space station, landed Wednesday morning at Kennedy Space Center.

William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations, downplayed any threat to the shuttle, calling the move a "precautionary" decision on the part of NASA and the Pentagon.

Seattle Times staff contributed to this report.