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USA 193 Shootdown Set For Feb 21, 03:30 UTC
An anonymous reader writes "Amateur satellite watcher Ted Molczan notes that a "Notice to Airmen" (NOTAM) has been issued announcing restricted airspace for February 21, between 02:30 and 05:00 UTC, in a region near Hawaii. Stricken satellite USA 193, which the US has announced plans to shoot down, will pass over this area at about 03:30. Interestingly, this is during the totality of Wednesday's lunar eclipse, which may or may not make debris easier to observe."
if they chose the eclipse date on purpose. We'll wait and see what they say AFTER it all happens.
... they're going to use a pop bottle to do the deed.
Bruce is a fellow satellite spotter also with some degree of background and in the subject matter and has good coverage here.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
A super secret sat is not responding for unknown reasons. This requires a shootdown which just happens to occur during a lunar eclipse.
Wow, who gets the movie rights for this one?
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
Since that time interval occurs during daylight hours near Hawaii, with the eclipsed moon (necessarily) below the horizon, I doubt the eclipse will have much effect on visibility. :)
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Disappointing. We need to LASER it.
The ill-tempered sea bass have a limited range, sorry.
This post may or may not be a way to tell you that may or may not is a totally ambigious statement. Some people may or may not notice this. I may or may not be modded Offtopic but I can also be modded +1 Funny or +1 Insightfull. However, this may or may not be the case.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Actually, the classified hardware/software will burn up on reentry. Their more concerned about the full tank of hydrazine that would survive a normal reentry and create a hazardous materials nightmare near a populated area. Since they suspect it is going to come down near Hawaii, I'd love to see some sort of Taco Bell stunt where TB gives away free tacos if the satellite lands in a volcano during the eclipse.
:(){
I find your post a little hard to follow, however with regard to space debris, the satellite is sufficiently low that all the debris is expected to deorbit relatively quickly (days or weeks).
Grr! Arg!
That this is just a response to China's ASAT test of January last year?
China: you see, we can blow up your satellites!!
USA: aha! We can blow up your satellites too!!
General public: Why are they blowing up satellites?
How we know is more important than what we know.
The thing's low enough that all of it -- intact or in pieces -- will deorbit soon (days to weeks). And actually, smaller debris deorbits faster; there's more surface area per volume (and hence per mass), so drag from the not-quite-vacuum of the upper atmosphere decelerates small pieces faster.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
No doubt goats will be slaughtered, wiccans consulted, and pentagrams drawn all in the hope that our missile intercept technology will actually work in a non-staged event.
Have gnu, will travel.
I find it quaint, the notion that the real reason they have to shoot the satellite down is because it has a tank of hydrazine onboard. Meanwhile, the Russians have let *freaking nuclear reactors* reenter our atmosphere. It's pretty transparent that they're A) trying to upstage the Chinese, and B) prevent any tech from making it into the hands of hostile parties. Even more transparent than the whole thing with A.Q. Kahn:
1) Pakistan funds its bloody nuclear program via nuclear equipment sales.
2) The international community eventually can no longer look the other way.
3) Khan steps forward. "Whoops, it was me! My bad. Every sale we made to every single country, I arranged, negotiated, and shipped everything, all with government aircraft, all of my own. No Musharraf involvement, nosiree!"
4) Bush and Musharraf: "Bad Khan! Well, that case is solved."
5) "House arrest", of the kind that lets you travel across the country. No charges pressed. Everyone wins.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
I'm surprised we didn't outsource this to China.
- They don't want a repeat of Skylab where parts landed in Australia and made us look bad.
- If it comes down in Russia (Russia spans 11 time zones so that's not too unlikely) they don't want the Russians to be able to figure out much from the debris.
- They want a chance to test their anti-satellite weaponry on a real target that isn't saying "Over here! I'm over here! Here I am! Yoo Hoo!"
There's actually a 4th reason - blowing stuff up is fun but they would never cop to it.That's certainly believable if you can take Deputy National Security Advisor James Jeffrey at his word:Apparently man-made objects containing hydrazine propellant frequently rain down from the sky without incident, according to rocket scientists and space security experts who "scoff" at this rationale. And Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Gen. James Cartwright doesn't seem too impressed either. But surely our Deputy National Security Advisor knows something about hydrazine that we don't.
Now who is this man James Jeffrey, you may ask?Source: Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2007, four months before the information in the Iran NIE would be exposed, having been known to the White House since 2006.
This guy sounds totally not full of shit at all!
I had a chat with my grandfather who works on attitude control systems for commercial satellites about hydrazine. Hydrazine is used for attitude control and orbit stabilization. Since contact was never made with this USA 193, the hydrazine tank should be full. The ignition for hydrazine is heat, so all they do to fire it is have a little toaster that ignites a little bit of fuel at a time. Because the ignition source is heat, the hydrazine tank has to be incredibly well insulated to maintain a constant temperature. If the tank were to survive reentry, by being shielded by other components melting off, it would most likely rupture when it hit the ground at terminal velocity. Hydrazine is a pretty serious hazmat, and even a small concentration of that into your system will do serious, potentially permanent or even fatal damage to your lungs. Even worse, the hydrazine could ignite upon hitting the Earth and cause a small explosion, though the gas leak is more likely. If you took the surface of the earth and divided it into 1 acre chunks, I doubt more than 5% of those acres would have people in them( figure 10% of the Earth is inhabited, and large portions of that are farm) Nevertheless, a 1/20 chance of killing/permanently damaging anywhere from 1(hits near Bear Grylls in the desert) to 10,000 people(hits Rio), it certainly seems like a politically influenced decision to get rid of a potential disaster.
At least they never dared launch anything as crazy as Starfish Prime.
We are not the immaculate custodians of space that you seem to be picturing. Why, do you think, did we not shoot down the Delta II second stage that reentered in 1997 with a large amount of residual hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide onboard? We have stages with signficant amounts of toxic residual fuel reenter all the time. Why, in the same year, when we had a Delta II explode *full* on liftoff, did the Air Force tell people in the *immediate area* that the smoke posed no danger? This was a *full launch vehicle*, not just a satellite's orbital maneuvering system. Do you have any idea how much beryllium we've had reenter? We sit by as large amounts of toxic materials enter all the time. As for the hydrazine itself, what do you think happens *on its own* to pressurized tanks of highly flammable fluids on reentry? I can't think of a *single* sizable object that's survived reentry still pressuretight.
The argument is completely bogus.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
It's pretty transparent that they're A) trying to upstage the Chinese, and B) prevent any tech from making it into the hands of hostile parties.
the only thing that's transparent is your bias. If they didn't try to shoot it down you'd claim it was "transparent" they didn't want to show the Chinese that they're capable of shooting it down, so they put lives at risk instead. In my opinion, you're one of those people who will criticize the US regardless of what it does.
"A) trying to upstage the Chinese." Here's a test of the system that will be used to shoot it down. As you can see, they've already hit targets in space. So shooting the satellite isn't that much of a stretch. It's hardly fair to characterize it as "upstaging" anyone.
"B) prevent any tech from making it into the hands of hostile parties" yes, because it's a big secret that spy satellites contain (whispers) cameras. shhh, don't tell anyone. It'd be a disaster if Al Queda found out. They might mount the camera on a donkey and fire it into orbit with a catapult.
Come on people. Occam's razor. We know that hydrazine is actually deadly. We know that Columbia's hydrazine tanks survived reentry. Colubia's tanks were empty, but this satellite's tanks will be full. The simplest explanation is that attempting to shoot it down doesn't increase the risk, but may substantially reduce the risk to humans. There's no down side. So that's why they're doing it. Take off your tin foil hat.