[meteorite-list] This'll really help solve the orbital debris problem...

[Darren Garrison]

From the morons that brought you Oil War 2, more freaking shrapnel in orbit (to
join the shrapnel in orbit donated by the Chinese a year or two back).

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330696,00.html

Pentagon Plans to Shoot Down Failing Satellite
Thursday, February 14, 2008

WASHINGTON —  U.S. officials say the Pentagon is planning to shoot down a broken
spy satellite expected to hit the Earth in early March.

The Associated Press has learned that the option preferred by the Bush
administration will be to fire a missile from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot
down the satellite before it enters Earth's atmosphere.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the options will not be
publicly discussed until a Pentagon briefing later Thursday.

It is not known where on Earth the satellite will hit. But officials familiar
with the situation said last week that about half of the 5,000-pound spacecraft
is expected to survive its blazing descent through the atmosphere and will
scatter debris — some of it potentially hazardous — over several hundred miles.

The satellite is outfitted with thrusters, small engines used to position it in
space, that contain the toxic rocket fuel hydrazine. Hydrazine can cause harm to
anyone who contacts it.

The satellite, known by its military designation US 193, was launched in
December 2006. It lost power and its central computer failed almost immediately
afterward, leaving it uncontrollable. It carried a sophisticated and secret
imaging sensor.

U.S. officials do not want this equipment to fall into the wrong hands.

"The Chinese and the Russians spend an enormous amount of time trying to steal
American technology," said John Pike, a defense and intelligence expert. "To
have our most sophisticated radar intelligence satellite — have big pieces of it
fall into their hands — would not be our preferred outcome."

Where it lands will be difficult to predict until the satellite descends to
about 59 miles above the Earth and enters the atmosphere.

It will then begin to burn up, with flares visible from the ground, said Ted
Molczan, a Canadian satellite tracker. From that point on, he said, it will take
about 30 minutes to fall.

In the past 50 years, about 17,000 man-made objects have re-entered the Earth's
atmosphere.

The largest uncontrolled re-entry by a NASA spacecraft was Skylab, the 78-ton
abandoned space station that fell from orbit in 1979. Its debris dropped
harmlessly into the Indian Ocean and across a remote section of western
Australia.

In 2000, NASA engineers successfully directed a safe de-orbit of the 17-ton
Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, using rockets aboard the satellite to bring it
down in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.

In 2002, officials believe debris from a 7,000-pound science satellite smacked
into the Earth's atmosphere and rained down over the Persian Gulf, a few
thousand miles from where they first predicted it would plummet.

Short-term exposure to hydrazine could cause coughing, irritated throat and
lungs, convulsions, tremors or seizures, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.

Long-term exposure could damage the liver, kidney and reproductive organs.