It’s the End of the World as We Know It » Blog Archive

Satellite’s Gone… Part Two

That spy satellite’s been in the news a lot in the last few days.

The big news is that the US military is going to try to shoot it down - possibly tonight! By the time you’ve read this, it may be over.

Shooting it down does not mean obliterating it so that it’s just all gone. It really means that one big piece gets turned into a bunch of smaller pieces which hopefully pose no threat to anyone unlucky enough to be in their path - and also which are small enough to be useless to anyone wondering what might be inside an American spy satellite. Oh yeah - the satellite carries “toxic fuel” (this is pretty believable, quotation marks aside; even gasoline is very toxic) and we want to make sure that burns up in the atmosphere, too.

Worried about the folks up in the space station? Well remember what I said about the Earth’s surface being big? Near-Earth space is even bigger. But just in case, CNN has checked in on it and the space station’s orbit is 215 miles above the Earth, while the satellite will be only about 150 miles above the Earth. The space station crew is unconcerned. Note to military: do not aim at space station.

Apparently the missile we’ll be using against the errant satellite is an “SM-3″, which has been used to destroy things in space, at least in tests. Rather than blow them up it just hits them so hard that they don’t survive the strike. I didn’t even know we had a satellite-killing missile; nobody ever keeps me up to date on these things!

Of course, there’s lots of speculation about the real motive for destroying the satellite. In fact, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated that the risk from the hydrazine fuel in the satellite was very ow, and independently of that, we’ve already had several several other objects with hydrazine in them reenter the atmosphere without much concern. So there are many theories all over the place about why we want to spend $60 million on a satellite that’s probably not much of a threat… I would think that the words “spy satellite” would be explanation enough, but apparently people really want more.

Russia may have the best theory of using this as a chance to test an anti-satellite missile on a real satellite, but I like engadget’s idea of the satellite carrying zombie-spores or Aliens better. Or it’s possible that the US is sending a message to China, which tested an anti-satellite satellite last year, saying, hey, we can mess with your satellites too.

And apparently the US government isn’t so pleased that people are looking at their spy satellites. Who would have guessed?

The satellite is due to be shot down at 3:30 UTC on February 21st - which is in less than a half an hour as I write this. It’s also during the total eclipse of the moon that’s happening tonight. Maybe.. maybe they’ll shoot down the moon!?! Uh huh.

Unfortunately, the weather here is poor and we won’t be seeing the moon or any exploding spy satellites. The weather may also delay the attempt to blow up USA 193, too.

Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy Blog has put together a 9 minute YouTube video explaning the whole thing. It’s embedded after the end of this article, before the links.

While it may cost $60 million to blow up USA 193, USA 193 itself is estimated to have cost ten billion dollars. Even Dr. Evil might have a problem with that.

So what’s your favorite song about satellites? I’ve got these in my iTunes library:

Lou Reed’s Satellite of Love
U2’s cover of Lou Reed’s Satellite of Love from “The Million Dollar Hotel”
Guster’s “Satellite”
The Doves’ “Satellites”

And right now, Radio Paradise is playing a song from Wim Wender’s “Until The End of the World”, a fantastic rambling film concerning the explosion of a satellite in orbit… sadly unavailable on DVD in the US.