Satellite Conspiracy

The satellite was destroyed on Wednesday, February 20 using a modified SM-3 missile fired by a U.S. Navy warship off the coast of Hawaii. The operation to shoot down the orbiting spacecraft was clearly designed to send a message to both Russia and China, America’s two major competitors in the race for military dominance in space. Interestingly, the SM-3 missile used to shoot down the satellite forms the terminal phase of the anti-ballistic missile system currently being developed by the Bush administration.



According to the Pentagon, the out-of-control satellite had to be brought down because the toxic fuel it was carrying, hydrazine, had frozen and so could not be used to guide the satellite into the Earth’s atmosphere to burn up. According to the Pentagon, the toxic fuel posed a significant risk to human health, given the impossibility of predicting where or when the satellite was going to come down. There was also some speculation on whether the satellite contained other potentially hazardous materials, such as a nuclear power source. The Pentagon certainly kept quiet about that.



Both Russia and China, along with many experts around the world, have dismissed the Pentagon’s hazardous fuel argument, saying there are many instances of satellites falling to Earth harmlessly before and it is unprecedented for such action to be taken against a rogue satellite. In 2002, for example, parts of a science satellite rained down over the Persian Gulf. The most spectacular case, however, of a satellite falling to Earth took place when Skylab, a 78-ton abandoned space laboratory belonging to NASA, fell from orbit in 1979. It came down in a fiery mass of debris strewn over the Indian Ocean and Australia. No one was harmed in that incident, but the event was a media sensation at the time.



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China and Russia have expressed their concern over the shooting down of the US satellite. There have been instances in the past of satellites falling safely. They are concerned that the satellite could have contained no technologies or even space weapons that the US is trying to keep a secret from Russia. This instance has definitely hurt our relationship with both China and Russia, and it may be a while until we actually find out what was on that satellite.

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