US to shoot down defective spy satellite

The Pentagon plans to shoot down a defective spy satellite with a tactical weapon to prevent it from hitting a populated area on Earth or spreading toxic fuel fumes, government officials said Thursday.

The satellite has about 450 kilogrammes of hydrazine fuel, which could be lethal if inhaled in high concentrations, they said.

General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said that the Pentagon had lost communication with the satellite shortly after it was launched in December 2006, putting it out of reach of ground controllers who could have brought it down safely.

The 2,270-kilogramme satellite will be targeted by a tactical standard missile-3 fired from a shipboard Aegis system within the next two weeks, but not until the Space Shuttle Atlantis has returned to Earth, now scheduled for Wednesday, Cartwright said in broadcast remarks.

Three ships would be deployed somewhere in the northern Pacific Ocean to fire the missile, which can reach "just beyond the atmosphere," Cartwright was quoted by DPA as saying.

Deputy National Security Advisor James Jeffrey said there was a "diplomatic rollout across the world" on Thursday to inform other states, as required under treaties regulating activities in space.

When China launched an anti-satellite missile to destroy an ageing weather satellite in orbit in January 2007, the United States, Japan and other countries lodged protests. Both the US and Soviet Union experimented with anti-satellite missile technology in the 1980s but abandoned their programmes out of fear that debris from such explosions in space could damage other satellites.