US to shoot down wayward spy satellite, but no debris to hit RP
CLARK FIELD, Pampanga – Three US Navy ships will attempt to shoot down tomorrow a malfunctioning 5,000-pound US spy satellite loaded with poisonous fuel over the Pacific Ocean, west of Hawaii, but an astronomy enthusiast allayed fears that debris from it would hit the Philippines.
“That spy satellite is small compared to the Skylab,” astronomy enthusiast Dr. Armand Lee, president of the Astronomy Students Association of the
Lee was referring to the Skylab, which created a furor in 1979 when it malfunctioned and entered the Earth’s atmosphere, although no one was hurt when it scattered debris over the
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Reports from the US Navy said three of its Aegis destroyers have been positioned in the
The missiles are designed to stop enemy aircraft and missiles but have the range to reach the lower levels of space.
Maj. Allan Ballesteros, spokesman of the ongoing Balikatan military joint exercise which started here last Monday, said US ships docking at Subic Bay brought some 500 US soldiers for the exercise, but could not say immediately if any of the vessels are US Navy Aegis ships tasked to hit the satellite in the Pacific Ocean.
US President George Bush ordered the shooting down of the awry satellite, referred to as
A CNN report said, “If the satellite falls to Earth it could leave a cloud of fumes the size of two football fields.”
International news agencies quoted Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, as saying that “our objective here was to reduce the risk.”
He said US Navy plans to launch a missile from a ship just as the satellite is expected to enter the atmosphere, or about 130 miles up, so as to break the satellite apart and allow its debris to land safely in the
Pentagon officials have been quoted as saying that without intervention, the satellite would come down on its own in early March in
For his part, National Aeronautics and Space Administration administrator Michael Griffin was quoted as saying, “If we miss, nothing changes. If we shoot and barely touch it, the satellite is just barely in orbit” and would still burn up in the atmosphere.
Florida Division of Emergency Management representative Dave Halstead said the
Real-time tracking of the US193 spy satellite can be found at www.n2yo.com.
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