The Satellite Shootdown: Behind the Scenes

US News and World Report ^ | Posted February 25, 2008 | Anna Mulrine

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

A warship's missile hits its target to cheers from the control room

Capt. R. M. Hendrickson stepped across the deck of the guided missile cruiser USS Lake Erie last Saturday afternoon to a bank of ballistic missile launch tubes, motioning to the particular 2-by-2-foot location from which a missile flew from the ship positioned at the time some 420 miles northwest of Hawaii.

A modified tactical Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) launches from the USS Lake Erie impacting a non-functioning NRO satellite.

(US Navy/AP)

The missile hit its target, destroying a defective intelligence satellite that was falling toward Earth at 17,000 miles per hour. It was unclear where the satellite would have hit had it crashed, most likely into the ocean. But the Pentagon had expressed particular concern about the school bus-size satellite's fuel tank filled with 1,000 pounds of hydrazine—which defense officials soberly described in a news release as "a hazardous fuel which could pose a danger to people on earth."

The USS Lake Erie is a warship equipped with the Navy's sophisticated Aegis weaponry, an advanced radar-based defensive system that is normally used against antiship missiles and other threats. This technology was adapted for the satellite shootdown.

In his stateroom, Hendrickson pops in a video of the missile's launch and of the ship's combat information center at the moment of impact.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

The crew describes the launch sound as deafening. "You'll see the first booster falling off," Hendrickson says as he narrates the video. "It just comes right back into the ocean." Seconds later, someone calls out, "Transition! Transition!" This is the signal that the missile is about to reach its target. Those in the control room are quiet for a moment, eyes riveted to the video monitors in front of them.

[samtheman]

Obama says he’s going to stop wasting money on anti-missile technology.

[Young Werther]

His opinion is "OFFENSIVE"

[norraad]

I like how they say 1000 lbs. , oooh, scary boys & girls, that about 140 gallons of harmless high test.

I'm embarrassed at how easy they bull$!T us.

[CPOSharky]

...falling toward Earth at 17,000 miles per hour.

Traveling around Earth at 17,000 mph in a slowly decaying orbit. (Learn to write clearly, Anna.)

[Ronin]

Way cool!!!!

Voooom.... swish.... KERBLOOWY!!!!

[El Gato]

I like how they say 1000 lbs. , oooh, scary boys & girls, that about 140 gallons of harmless high test.

Hydrazine is a bit different than high test gasoline. But even if it were, how'd you like a 140 gallon tank of high test to land on your house, with it's exterior quite hot from re-entry heating?

[Senator Goldwater]

All hail Ronald Reagan, who foresaw this exact moment 25 years ago.

[mad puppy]

This was more about demonstrating how easily the US military can blow satellites out of the sky. The message wasn’t for us.

[Ladysmith]

Hear hear!

[pfflier]

Yes she screwed up the orbital velocity and she really screwed up this one:

Hendrickson points out where the flames shooting from the missile's afterburners have singed the ship's bell during takeoff.

Bold emphasis...mine

Is she the expert???

[Dog]

Hey Two Thirds explain to norraad what 1,000 pounds of hydrazine would do a community...

[labette]

Related local story. Grandma is proud, too!

[rlmorel]

Hydrazine is extraordinarily toxic.

Remember when the shuttle landed way back when, and they set up big fans to blow on it while it sat on the runway?

IIRC, that was due to the fear of lingering hydrazine vapors from the thrusters.

[tubebender]

Did you see the Smiley Face in that photo?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Hey,...thanks...

[Vigilantcitizen]

Gunners mates rule.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From the related news links:

Satellite Shootdown: Like 'Star Wars

********************EXCERPTS***************************

HONOLULU—"It was like something out of Star Wars," said a senior defense official who watched in a Pacific Command control room here as the U.S. military shot down its broken reconnaissance satellite last night. The satellite was traveling at upwards of 17,000 mph with 1,000 pounds of hydrazine--that's "a hazardous fuel which could pose a danger to people on Earth," as the Department of Defense explained in a release.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I’m still looking....

[Two Thirds Vote Aye]

Well, Dog, I talked to a couple of my associate propulsion engineers, as I am a structural analyst and they are the ones that work with the hydrazine and design the propulsion system and neither one of them was willing to put a number on, say the TNT equivalent of 1000 lb of hydrazine. They did point out something that I hadn’t even thought of and that is the likelihood that the entire mass of hydrazine was probably a solid frozen block (freezes at about the same temp as H2O) since the heaters were probably not powered, depending on how the Sun was hitting it. My guess is that it would probably never made it as one liquid mass, but probably, at worst for us, would have been some sort of vapor by the time it got down, and if it blanketed a community, it would have been devastating because of the toxicity.