The Navy fired a “kill vehicle” into space to destroy a very large United States spy satellite which had lost its power and propulsion. It has been predicted that the satellite would hit an unknown spot on Earth in late February or March. No one has yet confirmed if the Navy hit was a success. Is the dangerous satellite still heading our way?
According to Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the National Security Council, the spy satellite is uncontrollable, containing hazardous materials with little else known about it as it is classified as secret. Attempting to make little of the situation, Johndroe states, “”Numerous satellites over the years have come out of orbit and fallen harmlessly. We are looking at potential options to mitigate any possible damage this satellite may cause.”
Because the information about the spy satellite is top secret, everything is kept pretty quite on condition of anonymity. Those in control of the situation are not saying a lot about whether or not the satellite could be shot down by missiles, which is one theory to keep it from hitting Earth.
Prior to the recent satellite falling uncontrollably from space, the NASA Skylab fell from orbit in 1979 from a 78-ton abandoned space station into the Indian Ocean, across from western Australia. And in 2000, NASA assisted in a safe de-orbit of the 17-ton Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, while using rockets that were aboard the satellite to land in the Pacific Ocean. Both landings were in “remote” areas, to put in bluntly.
In 2001, the United States had five high-resolution satellites that are several hundred miles in space, orbiting about 15 times a day. We also have about 10 “eavesdropping satellites” which orbit the Earth about 22,000 miles up with many secretive capabilities listening to radio transmissions, cell phones, and walkie-talkiesyet cannot detect any face-to-face conversations. Run primarily by the United States Department of Defense at the cost of $10 billion dollars a year, this amounts to a third of the intelligence budget.
Even though almost all of the nations have been notified of the falling defective United States spy satellite, the United States is one country who stands literally by itself in the quantity and quality of the space spy developments. Other countries do have such spy apparatus, but not to the extent the U.S. does. In addition to the commercial satellite imagery industries, our government has the ability to limit the collection and distribution spy data which provides essential information on the surface or terrain of the planet Earth, in addition to the existence of trucks or helicopters for war and military data.
