1. catdynamics
  2. In your face!

In your face!

By catdynamics on February 20, 2008.

US Navy is claiming successful shootdown of USA 193

Hey, totality of the Lunar eclipse!
Pretty...

CNN just reported that the USS Erie - and Aegis class cruiser - successfully intercepted and destroyed the USA 193 intelligence satellite with a modified SM-3 missile.

Hm. Show offs.

USA 193 was launched about 15 months ago, got to orbit but then lost attitude control and started a rapid decay.
Presumably a) thruster control was lost, and b) satellite went into gravity gradient mode.
It is allegedly a synthetic aperture radar sat, although there are rumblings that it is curiously underweight, so maybe a proof of concept rather than production sat, but if it has big dishes on booms and it went 90 degrees off attitude, it would indeed degrade rapidly in its orbit.

Official reason for shooting it down is controlled descent of chunky bits that might survive re-entry - including a full hydrazine tank - mustn't poison any more Peruvians. (see Y-Ranter)

Unofficially, the reason is to make sure no classified curious bits and bobs end up in central Asia where locals might pick them up and look at them

and a lot of people think it is being done to give the Navy some live target practise and send a message to random people about the US ability to intercept on some occasion lumps of metal moving fast on (sub)orbital trajectories.

Whatevah.

Tags
Random

More like this

Mars invades Peru
Well, the Peruvians claim something from above hit them... Maleficent Mystery Meteorite Miasma. Makes more sense then invading the Home Counties, or New Jersey for that matter; they'll want to adapt gradually to local conditions, start at altitude... The claim is that there was a fireball and…
UPDATE: UARS delays impact slightly, all bets off on location.
Newer update from NASA: Update #11 Fri, 23 Sep 2011 23:30:46 GMT As of 7 p.m. EDT on Sept. 23, 2011, the orbit of UARS was 90 miles by 95 miles (145 km by 150 km). Re-entry is expected between 11 p.m. Friday, Sept. 23, and 3 a.m., Sept. 24, Eastern Daylight Time (3 a.m. to 7 a.m. GMT). During that…
Practice makes perfect when you're shooting things in space
Well, that's good. The military successfully shot down a satellite whose decaying orbit brought up concerns that it might crash into...you know...something besides water. It had about a half ton of a compound called hydrazine that is explosive and toxic. While it is pretty unlikely that…
Ad Astrium
EADS Astrium, the European conglomerate that builds the Ariane rockets has come up with a concept vehicle for suborbital flights Hybrid jet and rocket plane about the size of a business jet. Capable of suborbital hops, allegedly, like the Rutan's Space Ship One Nominal market is high end tourism at…

The real official reason: to let the BMD Agency signal its credibility to the Federal Government.

The real reason: to let the US Navy demonstrate its superiority to the US Air Force.

"The real reason: to let the US Navy demonstrate its superiority to the US Air Force."

As if that needed to be demonstrated. ;)

I think Alex has got it.

381 F22s? Who needs 'em? Now a new attack sub....

By Brad Holden (not verified) on 21 Feb 2008 #permalink

'a) thruster control was lost, and b) satellite went into gravity gradient mode.'

(c) someone is walking around thinking 'where the fuck did I leave that spanner? Last time was...oh.'