Pentagon to Have Dead Satellite Shot Down

[jimglenn]

Maybe China will shoot down our interceptor! That would be a good start to WW3. Those rippers of our tech and IP have a big lesson to learn. We have more and better assets in space. We could smoke the whole wall around that place if we wanted to. Don't push UNCLE SAM. He is crazy. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[yevaud]

China is playing the old "let's reverse the onus" game. Their excuse for abruptly destroying a satellite (in a very bad way too) was...? <i>They</i> weren't being provocative <i>first</i>?<br /><br />I might add, given their past and also recent public proclamations, have nothing to say about us in terms of "provocative." <br /><br />[Edited due to grammatical error] <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Differential Diagnosis:  </em>"<strong><em>I am both amused and annoyed that you think I should be less stubborn than you are</em></strong>."<br /> </p> </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

I felt that was the expected "political" response.<br /><br />You would expect China and Russia to yell, since for the most part, they are the only nations likely to have such capabilities.<br /><br />A lot of diplomacy is positioning, and we do it just as much as they do.<br /><br />In fact, I still don't buy the "public safety" premise for our actions <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[Mee_n_Mac]

<font color="yellow">It is possible optical observations could determine that I guess if there's enough of a difference as it tumbles.</font><br /><br /><br />Just as an FYI, here's what an SM3 IR seeker "saw" during a prior test ...<br /><br />Defense Industry Daily article and pic <br /><br /><br />Now if the target were tumbling it might be hard to "focus" on a part that was moving though it certainly would be easy enough to hit the non-rotating centroid. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>-----------------------------------------------------</p><p><font color="#ff0000">Ask not what your Forum Software can do do on you,</font></p><p><font color="#ff0000">Ask it to, please for the love of all that's Holy, <strong>STOP</strong> !</font></p> </div>

 

[comga]

Yevaud: "You're probably correct. That sort of thing is not my strong suit. However, check the match on the equation I provided, and you'll see I am in the ballpark on the orbit time for a satellite at that altitude."<br /><br />Sorry but no, it is not correct. You may have an equation and the constants, but something was used incorrectly. 15 hr orbits are pretty high up. <br /><br />Orbit times are close to 90 minutes in LEO. Besides running the calculation, there were two passes listed on Heavens Above this evening, starting just about 95 minutes apart.<br />

 

[comga]

Mee_n_Mac "Well "they say" they'll be aiming for the hydrazine storage tanks."<br /><br />They say?<br /><br />This is doubtful, as it doesn't matter, and it may not be possible to determine in any case. You hit any part of the vehicle with any mass with many km/sec relative speed and everything is disrupted. The tanks are probably buried inside, the satellite is probably compact having never deployed antenna and such, and the attitude will be unknown. The best bet is to shoot for the center of mass. KISS. (Just like you said in your later post.)

 

[richalex]

Just goofing around with this calculator suggests that a 15-hour orbit corresponds to an altitude of 15230 miles (24510 km) above sea level.

 

[yevaud]

Ah, well then. Can't know everything, eh? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Differential Diagnosis:  </em>"<strong><em>I am both amused and annoyed that you think I should be less stubborn than you are</em></strong>."<br /> </p> </div>

 

[richalex]

I am guessing that you mis-placed a decimal point, but I haven't seen your calculations to check them... As if I should be checking anyone's calculations!

 

[yevaud]

It was *literally* a "back of the envelope* (a real envelope) calculation on the fly.<br /><br />I don't have a tremendous amount of time lately. Errors abound. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Differential Diagnosis:  </em>"<strong><em>I am both amused and annoyed that you think I should be less stubborn than you are</em></strong>."<br /> </p> </div>

 

[ryancrierie]

And it's gone. Go Navy.<br /><br />http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080219/navy_satellite_080220/20080220?hub=World

 

[pmn1]

40 days for all the debris to re-enter has been mentioned - does that sound correct? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[yevaud]

If so, much better than 10 years.<br /><br />Way to go, China. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Differential Diagnosis:  </em>"<strong><em>I am both amused and annoyed that you think I should be less stubborn than you are</em></strong>."<br /> </p> </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

That seems a bit long to me, but depending on the dispersal I suppose it's possible.<br /><br />If so, that could be a threat to the next shuttle launch. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[docm]

That satellite was in a polar orbit, and it's highly unlikely they'll launch the shuttle right under it. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

It will just need to be something they are aware of, if the pieces do indeed suvive that long.<br /><br />BTW, it was not a polar orbit, inclination was 58.5 degrees. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[docm]

Closer to polar than 28 deg or equatorial <img src="/images/icons/tongue.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

Yes but not that different from the ISS's 51.6 <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[pmn1]

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1073/2 <br /><br /><span class="postbody">Sense, nonsense, and pretense about the destruction of USA 193 <br />by James Oberg <br />Monday, March 3, 2008 <br /><br /><br />I'm sorry, but I just hate the phrase "satellite shoot down". It's not just because, in fact, hitting a satellite with a missile-like last February 20-doesn't really knock it out of the sky. It's because trying to bend "earthside" words around the unearthly, unfamiliar reality of outer space is a bad fit-and if it fools us into thinking the words are proper, then our clear thinking about the events will be crippled. <br /><br />"Shoot-down" implies that a physical attack has destroyed a characteristic of the target that previously had enabled it to remain aloft. For an aircraft, it could be its wings, or engine, or pilot; for a flying animal, it might be its very life. Once attacked, the object can no longer fly, and it falls to the ground. <br /><br />But for a satellite in orbit around the Earth, the physical principle that keeps it "up" is not its own power or guidance, but merely its forward speed-the so-called "orbital velocity". An attacker that does not substantially change that velocity cannot drive the satellite out of orbit. No matter how much physical damage it does, it cannot "shoot down" the target or even the fragments of it that remain after the attack. <br /><br />The only practical way that such targets can be removed from orbit is by slowing them down. And in practice, that occurs as a result of air drag, an effect that can take hours, weeks, or centuries depending on the thickness of the air at the satellite's altitude. Adding to the confusion, if the target explodes from the kinetic energy of the impact, pieces fly in all directions: some into lower orbits ("down") and some higher ("up"). <br /><br />So whether or not you "shoot" at a space target, it will get "downed" mainly by air drag. Breaking a big spacecraft into smaller pieces does increase the effects of air drag-as it dramatically did for the derelict spy satellite-but it is the key role of air drag that makes the critical causal link between "shooting" and "downing" the target. Omitting consideration of this effect leads to mistaken cause-and-effect expectations. <br /><br />Myths or mistakes? <br /><br />Numerous other misconceptions-"space myths" might be a useful term-intruded into media reportage of the event and threaten to cloud any productive discussions (or even international diplomacy) of future replays of it. Here are some examples: <br /><br />Myth #1: Falling satellites aren't really hazardous, and since they've never hurt anybody before, they're unlikely to hurt anybody this time (and hence there must be a secret "real reason" for the missile mission). This is a two-part myth that deserves two distinct refutations. <br /><br />But before the debunking, let's quote some of the bunk, and name the "bunkers": <br /><br />"The stated rationale for this shoot-down is simply not credible. There has to be another reason behind this&hellip; There has not been a single human being who has been harmed by man-made objects falling from space." Michael Krepon, Henry Stimson Center, Washington, DC, Feb 17. <br /><br />"Since 1957 hundreds of satellites [some of them three times heavier than USA 193] and pieces of debris have met the same fate&hellip; breakup and disintegration ensure. The likelihood of any of them hitting persons or buildings is very small." Sylvestre Huet, "Pentagon's Latest Fairy Tale", in Liberation, Paris, Feb 21. <br /><br />"In the past five years 300 satellites have fallen to Earth, and nobody has been hurt in connection with it." Sascha Lange, German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Berlin [Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Munich, Feb 22] <br /><br />"Uncontrolled reentry to Earth of space vehicles has been a repeated occurrence. Many countries use toxic fuel components. But on no occasion has this called for any extraordinary measures." Russian Defense ministry press release, Moscow, Feb 18. <br /><br />Now to the de-mythologizing of the stories. First, as space experts have learned from bitter experience, counting on a string of successfully dodging bullets is no open-ended guaranty of being bulletproof forever. The odds have a way of catching up with you, and defying them is an all-too-common fallacy called "normalization of deviance". At NASA, this attitude laid the foundation for the Challenger and Columbia shuttle catastrophes, among other space disasters. <br /><br />Secondly and more importantly, it's absolutely false that past safe outcomes always occurred even when countries let their big satellites randomly fall to Earth. Just the opposite is true: for decades, major spacefaring powers took deliberate and expensive steps to mitigate the ground-impact hazards of satellites, especially the large satellites most likely to peel back layer-by-layer during atmospheric entry and as a result deliver large intact hunks of the structure all the way down to the surface. <br /><br />All Russian spacecraft heavier than about 6,800 kilograms (15,000 pounds), and all US military satellites of similar masses, are deliberately steered into untraveled expanses of the far southern Pacific Ocean. In another example, eight years ago an expensive NASA spacecraft, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, was shut down over scientists' protests, and steered into the atmosphere, when partial failures in its control system threatened a random fall to Earth that threatened a high possibility (1-in-1,000) of human injury. Here's another: in 1978, NASA began an expensive effort to revive the shut-down Skylab in a deliberate attempt to steer it into the atmosphere over open ocean-an effort that failed in mid-1979, but was considered necessary at the time. These steps were taken specifically because allowing these massive objects to fall randomly was judged irresponsibly risky and so mitigation efforts were deemed mandatory. Nobody ignored these hazards-they acted to minimize them as they have done literally hundreds of times. <br /><br />So it is incorrect to allege that this latest falling satellite could have been allowed to fall randomly since that's what space programs had been safely doing for decades and "nobody has ever been hurt". Now, the mix of motivations for making the missile attack can be debated, but the up-front official claim about mitigating hazard cannot be glibly dismissed. <br /><br />Myth #2: The hydrazine on the spy satellite was unlikely to reach the ground in any concentration worth worrying about. <br /><br />Numerous experts told the press that the tank would almost certainly disintegrate, or explode, during its fiery descent. The only expert who said different was Michael Griffin, administrator of NASA, whose experts had studied this specific situation. Not good enough, the press decided. <br /><br />"There was virtually no chance it would remain intact," attributed to Dr. Geoffrey Forden, MIT, by Robery Maginnis, Human Events, Feb. 26. <br /><br />"The hydrazine tank - a hollow vessel - is unlikely to make it through the heat and aerodynamic violence of the plunge that awaits it, meaning that it will spill its contents high in the atmosphere, where it will represent barely a breath of gas that will disperse harmlessly." Jeffrey Kluger, Time magazine science correspondent, Feb. 20, 2008. <br /><br />These widespread allegations mostly ignore the first-ever special circumstances of this event, where a full tank of the chemical remained untouched by the crippled satellite, and where it had frozen solid, based on the expected low temperatures on board. Safety officials had never been faced with this type of falling material before. <br /><br />These non-intuitive effects of long-term "cold soaking" in Earth orbit were dramatically illustrated in 1985 when the Soviet Salyut 7 space station lost power. After several months, a repair team of cosmonauts arrived to find the station's water tanks frozen solid. Now, ordinary hydrazine (the kind on USA 193) freezes at a point a few degrees warmer than water, so it shouldn't be surprising that it would freeze too. In the Russian case, that station's thrusters used a variant form called "UDMH" (unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine) that has a much lower freezing point, and it did not get cold enough to freeze that fuel-but the water did. <br /><br />Myth #3: Hydrazine isn't really very dangerous anyway. <br /><br />"To die from hydrazine exposure would require standing around and breathing it for hours." Guy Raz, "All Things Considered", National Public Radio, Feb. 14. <br /><br />"The claim there was danger from the fuel is not the most preposterous thing the Pentagon has ever said. But it seemed to be a bit of a stretch." John Pike, GlobalSecurity.org <br /><br />"It certainly would seem that protecting people against a hazardous fuel was not what this was really all about." Dr. Geoffrey Forden, MIT. <br /><br />It might be interesting to actually perform experiments to test this claim, with the experts who made it volunteering as the test subjects. After all, FEMA emergency teams were alerted to the satellite fall with documentation describing the chemical as both toxic and flammable (imagine the damage if it fell among wooden buildings or dry woodlands). A number of American industrial and military workers have indeed survived massive short-term dosing by the chemical during fuelling accidents, but luckily they usually did so due to the immediate application of pre-deployed safety measures-a luxury that more than six billion other potential victims would have no access to. <br /><br />More widespread damage (that the US is legally responsible for) could easily follow the impact of such a hazardous cargo in a region with active agricultural exports or tourism. As with the Palomares incident forty years ago (where two American nuclear weapons fell to Earth in Spain after an aircraft accident), people outside the region might be so spooked by sensationalistic press coverage that they stop buying the regional exports and stop visiting its recreational facilities. This lost business damage alone could easily reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars. And even when faltering Russian rockets fuelled by hydrazine fall back over empty deserts near the launch site in Kazakhstan, massive cleanup operations are required, and millions of dollars of reparations must be paid by Moscow-nobody treats that spilled hydrazine as "not dangerous". <br /><br />Myth #4: The satellite contained a nuclear reactor or other type of radioactive power plant. <br /><br />"Moscow suspects the satellite may be carrying a nuclear power unit." Lead story, Rossiya TV "Vesti" news program, Feb. 15, 2008. <br /><br />"According to the analysis of our military people&hellip; that may be evidence that there was a nuclear power plant in it." Igor Barinov, Deputy Chaiman of the State Duma Committee on Defense. <br /><br />"The American generals are not perturbed in the least that a strike against an object with a nuclear power plant (the satellite's lack of solar batteries led our experts to that conclusion) threatens serious consequences&hellip;" Yuriy Gavrilov, Rossiyskay Gazeta [official government newspaper], Feb. 21. <br /><br />"It would have been much better if it [the nuclear power unit] had fallen down as a whole piece." Igor Ostretsov, Russian Institute for Nuclear Engineering:, on Vesti-24 TV, which also quoted him as saying the likelihood that radioactive substances will rain down on Earth is 100% (quoted by Agenstvo Voyennikh Novostey, Feb 22.) <br /><br />One could cynically expect the Russians to want to blame other countries for threatening "nuclear contamination from space", since it wass the USSR that really did so on such a grand and repeated scale. As for not seeing solar panels (an observation confirmed by private skywatchers), the satellite's failure within seconds of reaching space could account for that. And had there been a powerful nuclear reactor, there should have been large heat radiators-not as easy as solar panels to notice, but readily visible had they been there. <br /><br />US law prohibits nuclear power in the kind of low orbit USA 193 was launched into, and the level of inter-agency cooperation that such a system would require would guarantee leakage of the presence of such a system. This claim, widely ignored outside of Russia, can easily be dismissed as a clumsy opportunistic smear instigated within the Russian government. <br /><br />Fallout on Earth <br /><br />Beyond the technological myths, there are a number of political-diplomatic myths that have technological contexts. <br /><br />Myth # 5: The action was denounced by all experts, and especially by the Russians. <br /><br />Some of the generic denunciations by Western experts have already been quoted, above. There are more: <br /><br />"The reason given by the Pentagon &hellip; has perplexed space circles." Le Figaro. <br /><br />"The US claims that destroying one of its defunct satellites with a missile was necessary for the hazard its toxic fuel posed to life on Earth. It's an understatement that the world isn't convinced; neither are American experts&hellip; The toxicology appears too far-fetched to merit such a gargantuan program." Surajit Dasgupta, The Pioneer, New Delhi, Feb 25. <br /><br />Actually, it may be true that condemnation was universal from the people on the rolladexes of writers for the New York Times, the Washington Post, AP, Reuters, Agence France Presse, and other major news media outlets, but that simply reflects the narrow range of sources they rely on, not the full spectrum of existing assessments available to anyone seeking a balanced collection of views. Keep in mind that these notable quotables are called "experts" not because they have ever been professional space workers (or even studied the field or any other in college) but often because they are employees of lobbying groups funded to promote particular political, ideological, and diplomatic ends. <br /><br />If there is a leading "space expert" in Russia, it would be Anatoliy Perminov, head of the Russian space agency. It was his opinion that the measure was necessary, and justified. "Destroying it is the inevitable and right thing to do," Perminov told "Vesti TV" news in Moscow on February 16. "I think the decision to destroy it is the right one." Oddly enough, none of the leading news media outlets that I've come across ever included Perminov's opinion in their descriptions of what "Russian experts" thought. <br /><br />Other foreign commentators agreed, but their views also were never quoted. For example, General Jiri Sedivy, former chief of staff of the Czech Army's General Staff: "There was no other way&hellip; It was the right thing to do." [Prague, Mlad&aacute; fronta DNES, February 22.] The Times of India, in an editorial on February 23, opined: "It was a necessary step." <br /><br />Members of the US Congress were briefed on the action and both Democrats and Republicans issued statements of support. I never saw any quoted in the press. <br /><br />See also, for example ,"Satellite Shootdown Was A Necessary Operation," by Baker Spring, The Heritage Foundation, or Ashley Tellis (senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), "Don't Panic About Space Weapons", Wall Street Journal, Feb 22. Jeffrey Kueter, president of the George Marshall Institute, had a guest editorial in USA Today on February 21. Neither Spring nor Tellis nor Kueter seemed to have gotten quoted anywhere else in the mass media. <br /><br />The apparent unanimity of condemnation of the action therefore looks more like an artifact of the filtering of sources deemed worthy of mentioning, which is a sad reflection on the professionalism and fairness of dominant news reporting agencies. <br /><br />Myth #6: The smashing of the satellite violated established "rules of the road" for minimizing hazards from space debris. <br /><br />Actually, NASA space debris expert Nicholas Johnson addressed this accusation directly in a paper he presented to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer space (COPUOS) in Vienna on February 18. NASA was a member of the US delegation to the 45th Session of the COPUOS Scientific and Technical Subcommittee, and the State Department reviewed and approved Johnson's paper. But so far as I can tell, the world news media totally ignored the presentation and its contents. <br /><br />"To be compliant with the COPUOS STSC space debris mitigation guidelines and to minimize any effect on the near-Earth space environment, the kinetic engagement of USA-193 would occur shortly before a natural reentry and at an altitude below 250 km," the paper stated. "More than 50% of the debris created will not be orbital and will enter the Earth's atmosphere within 45 minutes of the event. Of the debris left in temporary orbits about the Earth, more than 99% will fall out of orbit within one week of the event." <br /><br />The United Nations explicitly recognizes that it may occasionally be necessary to smash a satellite, and spells out the conditions under which this is acceptable. The NASA paper describes how the requirements will be satisfied: "Guideline 4 of the Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines addresses those rare cases when 'intentional destruction and other harmful activities' might be necessary: 'Recognizing that an increased risk of collision could pose a threat to space operations, the intentional destruction of any on-orbit spacecraft and launch vehicle orbital stages or other harmful activities that generate long-lived debris should be avoided. When intentional break-ups are necessary, they should be conducted at sufficiently low altitudes to limit the lifetime of resulting fragments.' Under the plan to neutralize the USA-193 spacecraft, the event will take place at a very low altitude and will result in space debris with extremely short orbital lifetimes to be fully compliant with Guideline 4 of the COPUOS STSC Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines." <br /><br />Post-smash tracking vindicated the planning, according to a statement provided to me by the Missile Defense Agency: "Most of the fragments, gravel, marbles, shards stayed close to intercept altitude. A handful of fragments were tracked with a much, much higher apogee. Total number of objects created after the smash was much lower than we predicted. It seems we have work to do modeling 22000 mph [35,400 km/h] collisions! Now we have empirical data, at least." <br /><br />Myth #7: The missile attack marks the inauguration of a substantially new operational "space weapon". <br /><br />The modified Aegis/SM-3 system that destroyed USA 193 doesn't seem to make a very effective anti-satellite weapon if you want to attack really important targets. Only by stretching its speed, software, and range beyond original design specifications was it able to reach barely above the atmosphere to hit a satellite within weeks of terminal reentry. Getting higher-reaching altitudes where potential targets orbit, up where the US test in 1985 occurred, or the Chinese test last year, or the Soviet tests throughout most of the Cold War-may not even be physically possible. Higher altitudes need stronger rockets and means much longer launch-to-impact coasting durations, requiring more warhead power supplies. Precision tracking with radars on several ships loses accuracy by the fourth power of increasing range, because the pulse weakens on the way out and on the way back, so a target twice as far away is only one-sixteenth as observable. Other countries' critical warning and command/control satellites are far, far beyond such a system's reach. <br /><br />Responding to my direct inquiry, the Missile Defense Agency released a comment from an official who asked to remain unnamed: "We were operating on the margins of a system well engineered for a different job." The need for bigger rockets and farther reaching would make the current achievement irrelevant to a more capable ASAT. <br /><br />Myth #8: Russia and China will be "forced" to respond by developing corresponding weapons. <br /><br />This "blank check for the bad guys" claim seems to be a view espoused by spokesmen for DC lobby groups, for foreign governments, and for other associations who seem to favor one spin in common: any foreign action allegedly sparked by anybody's worries about US actions is excusable, while any US action sparked by activities of another nation is dangerously paranoid. But China has already "pre-responded" with its own test a year ago-a weapon with far greater capability (and leaving far worse space pollution) than the US missile. As for Russia, it's had its space-capable anti-missile defense shield deployed around Moscow for decades, and recently reopened a mothballed missile test range at Sary Shagan in Kazakhstan to test-fire upgraded missiles. They are probably launched so far only against imaginary missile or space targets, or potentially against real ones with no final impacts. Even if one of them is soon used in a demonstration against a satellite, it will represent nothing new in their arsenal, only the exercise of a latent capability that had always been there. <br /><br />Why is this worth fussing about? <br /><br />The danger in such terminological confusion and myth-making is that the topic of weapons in space is a serious one requiring serious national debate, especially in this presidential election year. But if all parties cannot find verbal tools with clear meanings, and develop a common foundation of factual reality, then any discussions will quickly decay into non-interacting exchanges of slogans and sincere but pointless posturing. At least, that's what has been happening so far, and what this recent missile test could become a valuable impetus for repairing. But it will only happen if there's a major change of heart-and change of brain-in the way people report on such activities. <br /><br />If a debate over the USA 193 smash-up can "shoot down" the widespread sloppy terminology, knee-jerk politicizing, and reliance on deeply-rooted ambiguous concepts that have frustrated serious exchanges of opposing views on important aspects of national security policy, it will make a much more profound contribution to the safety of this planet than just protecting one random spot from half a ton of plummeting poison. And that would be a real breakthrough. Will it survive entry into our atmosphere? <br /><br />James Oberg (www.jamesoberg.com) is a 22-year veteran of NASA mission control. He is now a writer and consultant in Houston.</span> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[billslugg]

<p>Do you all remember the concerns that were raised by the US anti-satellite test on Feb 21, 2008? The claim was that we were just as irresponsible as the Chinese in cluttering up LEO. The Chinese shot down their FENGYUN 1C polar-orbiting weather satellite on Jan 11, 2007 at an altitude of 800 km. The US shot down USA-193 at an altitude of only 247 km.</p><p>Jonathan's Space Report says today that the last catalogued piece of USA-193&nbsp;re-entered on Oct 9, 2008, while there are still 2339 catalogued pieces in orbit from the Chinese test.</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p> </div>