- Monday, 16 November 2009
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People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like - Abraham Lincoln
Dead US spy satellite could fall anywhere
THE US Air Force has admitted that it's got a large spy satellite overhead that is dead and expected to fall out of orbit and impact the earth's surface in late February or early March, the Associated Press reports.
The satellite, which is designated as US 193, was launched in December 2006 but suffered a complete computer failure, lost power and can't be controlled.
The head of the US Air Force Northern Command, General Gene Renuart, told the AP that the satellite is so large and heavy that some parts of it likely won't burn up during reentry and will probably hit the earth's surface. "We're aware it is a fairly substantial size. And we know there is at least some percentage that it could land on ground as opposed to in the water," he said. He added, "...it looks like it might re-enter into the North American area."
Or just about anywhere else on earth, for that matter. General Renuart reportedly cautioned that they won't have "much detail" on where or when it will crash until it begins to move through the atmosphere and break up. In other words, the Air Force can't really predict where this satellite might come down.
John Locker, a British amateur satellite watcher, took video images that show the satellite to be about 13 to 16.5 feet long. He believes the satellite weighs up to 10,000 pounds. According to Locker and other amateur satellite watchers, it's currently at about 173 miles altitude and dropping at a rate of about 1,640 feet per day. The satellite won't begin its visible reentry into the atmosphere until it's only 59 miles above the surface, after which it will take only about 30 minutes until impact, according to Ted Molczan, a Canadian satellite tracker.
The US Air Force isn't publicly saying that this satellite could fall to earth just about anywhere. But that seems to be the case. ยต
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They could always ask the Chinese to nuke it with their earth to orbit satellite killer rockets... ;-)
I have an excuse to get a new catchers mitt.

Hey batter batter batter batter, SAwing batter.

Aren't they still looking for pieces of Skylab? With all the crap zipping around, up there, it's amazing that this doesn't happen once a month. My biggest worry is that it's one of those, whaddaycall, top secret thingies. Maybe time to invest in a copy of the Zombie Survival Guide.
"And we know there is at least some percentage that it could land on ground as opposed to in the water"

Given that the earth's surface is 2/3 water, would that percentage be around the 33% mark by any chance?
While the US seems completely incapable of shooting down an object as such; even when it's got a predetermined path and rate of descent(missile shield? hahahahah) The Great People's Republic seem to have this worked out and have already successfully knocked one out of the park. 

My advice, swallow your pride Yankees. Get on the horn and give your 'technologically primitive' brothers of the East a holla.

Sure they'd never let you live it down. 

Come to think of it neither would the rest of the world, or your citizens, or their dogs, or your Go.. 

Oh, who am I kidding, a humbled American Military? Since they'd never do such a sensible thing, so allow me this:

HA HAHA HA HAHA HA HA HA! HAHAHAHAHA HA HAAAAA!!!!
Blasting the satellite will only create a bazillion high velocity bits, many going into higher orbits and all getting scattered, so that LEO becomes useless.

What the hell are you thinking?
... that in the tests where the Chinese 'shot down' a satellite it wasn't totally destroyed but just damaged to the extent that it no longer worked. The USA is already capable of doing the same thing but this is a long way from actually turning the sat into lots of little pieces that would burn-up during re-entry.

In these sat shoot-down tests they don't go for a direct hit but for a proximity detonation that sprays shrapnel at it. Although sats have to be radiation hardened it's impractical to actually cover them in any sort of ballistic armour - that's just extra non-functional weight to be lifted into orbit - so a spray of debris in close enough proximity will stop it from working.

To destroy it by a direct hit you'd need a much larger missile to carry a warhead big enough to do the job and all the extra gubbins needed for a more accurate interception. As there's no military need to physically destroy satellites - just stop them from working - the extra costs of making a total destruction missile aren't justified and no one has pursued it.

If they knew where it was coming down it and wasn't so large then the Patriot missile system might stand a chance of hitting it but they don't and it is, so no joy there.

In summary, all anyone could do at this point in time is stop it from working, which is exactly what the situation is right now.

I am not a rocket scientist.
damn, too slow. 
fishbone beat me to the punch
As long as it misses Chili it won't get hot.
The US has had anti-satellite rockets for many many years, they have one that fires from fighters and was tested successfully. and they reportingly also have dormant sleeper satellites that are designed to seek out and destroy other satellites in case of war (although information on those is sketchy and they might have discontinued that system after the cold war). 
Furthermore neither the US nor russia (who reportingly also developed such a system) nor china would 'nuke' a satellite since it was found that just flying into one without any kind of explosives was deadly effective.
And nuking things in low orbit would be pretty disastrous, for many reasons, think radiation, think EMP, etcetera. And would hopefully create an international boycott and ban on any insane country trying that.
If any of the pieces kill someone, the response by the government would be interesting. If it kills a non-American, it would be more interesting. If it kills a declared ally, extremely interesting.

And if it kills a citizen of a country that hates the US? In that case, I've finally got something in the news that interests me and isn't science related.

Not that I want anyone to die, but if they do, I certainly want to read all the juicy details. The doubletalk in other words, doubletalk is very entertaining to me.