U.S. missile shoots down spy satellite - but why?
by Peter Grier and Gordon Lubold
(The Christian Science Monitor)
Yes, the Pentagon can obliterate a broken satellite tumbling at the edge of space. The question is, why bother?
That is the reaction of some experts to the successful destruction Feb. 20 of a dead US spy satellite 153 miles over the Pacific
Ocean.
The
official explanation ?that the US wanted to prevent the toxic contents
of the spacecraft’s fuel tank from hitting the ground ?seems a bit
thin, according to James Lewis, director of the technology and public
policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Thus critics from around the world have speculated about ulterior
motives, ranging from a desire to test US ballistic missile defenses to
poking China in the eye.
Mr. Lewis says he thinks the Defense
Department crunched the numbers and found there was a chance the
satellite might come down somewhere embarrassing, or dangerous, like
the landmass of a foreign country. He thinks it was not the fuel tank’s
toxic hydrazine fuel, but a more general desire to prevent any impact,
that led to the decision to shoot it down.
It was a surfeit of caution, says Lewis.
A three-stage Navy SM-3 missile hit the satellite 153 miles up, just northwest of Hawaii, said military officials at a Feb.
21 news conference.
The
missile’s kill vehicle contained no explosives and had to maneuver into
the path of the satellite and collide with it, destroying it with
kinetic force. The spacecraft ?described as being about the size of a
school bus, and weighing about 5,000 pounds ?exploded spectacularly.
That fireball likely indicates that the frozen hydrazine fuel was destroyed, said military officials, but they won’t know
for sure until Feb. 23 or 24.
Our
objective was to intercept the satellite, reduce the mass that might
survive reentry, [and] vector that mass into unpopulated areas, ideally
the ocean, said Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff.
The military has long described the
difficulty of hitting an object in space with a missile as being akin
to striking a bullet with another bullet. With the 25th anniversary of
President Ronald Reagan’s original speech calling for a Strategic
Defense Initiative coming up on March 23, the US has now fully
demonstrated such a capability.
Yes, this was uncharted territory, said General Cartwright. The technical degree of difficulty was significant here. You
can imagine that at the point of intercept there were a few cheers that went up.
Last year, China used a newly developed antisatellite missile to destroy a weather satellite orbiting 528 miles above the
earth. The unannounced move surprised the world and caused the US to react with anger and concern.
The
US spy satellite destruction was different from the Chinese move for
two reasons, according to US officials. It was announced in advance.
The Chinese move was not. It also took place at a low orbit, meaning
the resultant cloud of debris for the most part will fall into the
atmosphere and burn up. The Chinese antisatellite missile left a cloud
of debris in a higher orbit, endangering other spacecraft.
But both the Chinese and the Russians complained about the US move, saying it risked accelerating an arms race in space and
showed the hypocrisy of America’s criticism of China.
China
is continuously following closely the possible harm caused by the US
action to outer-space security and relevant countries, said Chinese
Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao at a news conference in
Beijing.
Some critics say there’s now a danger that the US move will provide other nations an excuse to move forward with their own
programs.
Given
that it has the most satellites of any nation, and its military depends
more heavily on space assets than does any other, the US should be
taking the lead in pressing for an international ban on weapons in
space, said Laura Grego, an astrophysicist with the Union of Concerned
Scientists, in an analysis of the impact of the satellite’s
destruction.
The potential cost of shooting down this satellite is high…. Demonstrating an antisatellite weapon is counterproductive
to US long-term interests.
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