U.S.: Missile Smashed Spy Satellite
The Pentagon says a U.S. missile smashed a disabled spy satellite that was headed for earth and the military is tracking the debris as it falls over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon press conference Thursday that he couldn't rule out that hazardous material would fall to the earth.
But he says so far officials have tracked "nothing larger than a football."
Cartwright says officials also "have a high degree of confidence" - though are not ready to say for sure - that the missile launched from a Navy ship near Hawaii struck the satellite's fuel tank. Officials said the toxic hydrazine fuel in the tank would have caused a hazard had it fallen to Earth.
The military concluded that the missile had successfully shattered the satellite because trackers detected a fire ball, which seemed to indicate the exploding hydrazine in the tank. A vapor cloud also suggested the destruction of the fuel, he said.
He said officials are 80 percent to 90 percent sure that the tank was breached and the hazardous material was vented off but will know better in the next couple of days.
Debris from the satellite has started re-entry and will continue through Thursday and into Friday, Cartwright said.
Nearly all of the debris will burn up on re-entry within 24-48 hours and the remaining debris should re-enter within 40 days, officials said.
The size of the debris is smaller than the Pentagon had forecast and most of the satellite's intelligence value was likely destroyed, Cartwright said. Though the Pentagon has played down that aspect of the shootdown, analysts had said one of the reasons for the operation was that officials worried that without it, larger chunks of the satellite could fall and be recovered, opening the possibility of secret technology falling into the hands of the Chinese or others.
China said Thursday it was on the alert for possible harmful fallout from the shootdown and urged Washington to promptly release data about the action.
"China is continuously following closely the possible harm caused by the U.S. action to outer space security and relevant countries," ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a regular news conference.
"China requests the U.S. to fulfill its international obligations in real earnest and provide to the international community necessary information and relevant data in a timely and prompt way so that relevant countries can take precautions."
The United States criticized the Chinese government last year for conducting an anti-satellite missile test launch, but has denied this launch was a response to that action by Beijing.
The USS Lake Erie, armed with an SM-3 missile designed to knock down incoming missiles - not orbiting satellites - launched the attack at 10:26 p.m. EST, according to the Pentagon. It hit the satellite about three minutes later as the spacecraft traveled in polar orbit at more than 17,000 mph.
The Lake Erie and two other Navy warships, as well as the SM-3 missile and other components, were modified in a hurry-up project headed by the Navy in January. The missile alone cost nearly $10 million, and officials estimated that the total cost of the project was at least $30 million.
An elaborate command system that stretched from the Pentagon to Hawaii controlled the operation, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin.
The operation was so extraordinary, with such intense international publicity and political ramifications, that Defense Secretary Robert Gates - not a military commander - made the decision to pull the trigger.
Gates had arrived in Hawaii a few hours before the missile was launched. He was there to begin a round-the-world trip, not to monitor the missile operation. His press secretary, Geoff Morrell, told reporters traveling with Gates that the defense chief gave the go-ahead at 1:40 p.m. EST while en route from Washington.
Morrell said Gates had a conference call during the flight with Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, head of Strategic Command, and Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They told him that "the conditions were ripe for an attempt, and that is when the secretary gave the go-ahead to take the shot, and wished them good luck," Morrell said.
At 10:35 p.m. EST, Gates spoke to both generals again and "was informed that the mission was a success, that the missile had intercepted the decaying satellite, and the secretary was obviously very pleased to learn that," said Morrell.
The government organized hazardous materials teams, under the code name "Burnt Frost," to be flown to the site of any dangerous or otherwise sensitive debris that might land in the United States or elsewhere.
Also, six federal response groups that are positioned across the country by the Federal Emergency Management Agency were alerted but had not been activated Wednesday, FEMA spokesman James McIntyre said before the missile launch. "These are purely precautionary and preparedness actions only," he said.
CBS News correspondent Barry Petersen said the negative reaction to the satellite shootdown was predictable. "China is also using the occasion to criticize the U.S. for not joining a joint China-Russia proposal for a treaty banning weapons in outer space," he said.
The Chinese have consistently opposed the Star Wars anti-missile defense program which is being actively pursued by the Bush administration, saying it could spark a new missile race.
That said, added Petersen, the Chinese have been aggressively upgrading their own military, leaving behind the concept of a million soldiers needed to win a battle, and are now focusing on high-tech weapons and systems.
"It would be optimistic to say the Chinese motives for criticizing the U.S. over weapons in outer space are about world peace," said Petersen. "In fact, it's also about China's desire to field a military as high-tech as America's someday soon. Every time America makes another technological advance, China's ambitions suffer a setback."
Andrei Kokoshin, a former secretary of the Russian Security Council, and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said "There is nothing new in this show from the point of view of defense technologies. The former Soviet Union and the United States were capable of doing that in the 20th century. However, from the political point of view, this may result in a new stage in space militarization," according to Interfax reports.
President Bush gave his approval last week to attempt the satellite shootdown on grounds that it was worth trying to destroy the toxic fuel on board the satellite before it could possibly land in a populated area.
The three-stage Navy missile, designated the SM-3, has chalked up a high rate of success in a series of tests since 2002, in each case targeting a short- or medium-range ballistic missile, never a satellite. A hurry-up program to adapt the missile for this anti-satellite mission was completed in a matter of weeks; Navy officials said the changes would be reversed once this satellite was down.
Having lost power shortly after it reached orbit in late 2006, the satellite was out of control and well below the altitude of a normal satellite. The Pentagon determined it should hit it with an SM-3 missile just before it re-entered Earth's atmosphere, in that way minimizing the amount of debris that would remain in space.
Left alone, the satellite would have been expected to hit Earth during the first week of March. About half of the 5,000-pound spacecraft would have been expected to survive its blazing descent through the atmosphere and would have likely scattered debris over several hundred miles.