by CKR
While we were sleeping and the moon was totally eclipsed, the Navy hit satellite USA 193 with their first shot.
China is paying attention. The Guardian notes Chinese reaction.
"The United States, the world's top space power, has often accused other countries of vigorously developing military space technology, but faced with the Chinese-Russian proposal to restrict space armaments, it runs in fear from what it claimed to love," said the ruling Communist party's newspaper, the People's Daily.Nobody's quite sure that the fuel tank was hit, but even if it wasn't, it is now more exposed to the rigors of reentry, which may take care of its dangers to people on earth.Earlier this month, Russia and China proposed a treaty to ban weapons in space and the use or threat of force against satellites and other spacecraft. But Washington rejected the proposal as unworkable and said it favoured confidence-building efforts, US media reported.
The fragments should enter the atmosphere over the next 48 hours, which may make for some nice meteor-shower-watching, although it won't be here in New Mexico, where a gentle snow is sifting down from the clouds that obscured the eclipse onto the seeds I spread yesterday.
The Washington Post notes the failure of the satellite that occasioned these problems.
[John] Pike and others believe that the failed satellite was part of a controversial contract given in 1999 to Boeing, which had never built a spy satellite before, and ultimately the contract was taken from the company because of technological and financial problems.Like the software contract for the FBI database and so many other failures, a first-time try on the part of a defense contractor. But hey! It keeps them viable in case they ever have to provide something. We may wonder what penalties were imposed on Boeing, but I think we can guess: not much.
Amateur astronomers who track satellites identified the December 2006 launch as troubled from the start. They reported that the satellite never left its low orbit for the higher one it needed and that the orbit gradually became lower.It's good that there is some capability still left in the United States. Maybe they should get the next contract.
Op-ed by Bruce McDonald and Charles Ferguson in the Los Angeles Times
Update: Defense Department video here.