Of course they stopped it!
You don’t fire a nuclear war head from a ship in the Atlantic Ocean, with the missile traveling at 4000 miles per hour, aimed at an object the size of an average lounge traveling at 25000 miles per hour and miss- or do you?
According to reports, there was an impact and a cloud of vapor which suggests the rocket fuel that they were hoping to blow up so it did not enter the atmosphere was destroyed. There have been re-entries of small fragments, most of which have burned up with one or two falling on the surface of the earth but, so far, no damage reports.
So, officially, they hit it and any danger has passed.
There are some questions which spring to mind.
If the Navy wanted to take down the satellite, why not do it months ago? Why leave it until almost the last minute when a second chance, should they miss, was far less likely? Would it not just burn up, fuel and all in the same way other satellites have fallen to earth?
If they wanted to test a missile, as some suggest, why not just say so? China had a very thinly veiled rocket test a few weeks back and destroyed one of their satellites so why don’t the US Navy simply state they are doing the same to keep all things even and square? It’s their satellite and they can shoot it down if they want. Even if it was a test, the reasons were valid.
If China had not shot down her satellite, would another solution or simply waiting have seemed a good option?
Also, and this is most intriguing, if they missed (and they may have done and now be covering up by inventing a success story – who knows)? where is the rocket? It will surely keep going in the non-friction vacuum of space, until it hits something. What if that something is a craft or communications satellite from another world? Will this be how we make first contact?
Will they send another rocket after the first if they missed? Then what if that one misses- where will this rocket go? Will we end up shooting umpteen rockets into the sky going who knows where?
The thought is frightening but actually not so. They fired, they hit with all the gadgetry at their disposal I do not think for one minute the satellite is still up there, threatening to fall from the sky – literally!. I just think they should have done it sooner – or were they waiting for a clear day?
