Satellite, Satellite  

The US has now downed its "rogue" satellite, thus saving the world's population from the perils of the hydrazine (pdf) it enclosed (clearly the Bush administration is far more concerned about this stuff in the atmosphere than it is about carbon dioxide).

A missile launched from an American navy ship has successfully struck a dying US spy satellite passing 210 kilometres over the northern Pacific Ocean. "The missile's been launched and (it was) a successful intercept,'' a Pentagon source said. It happened just after 10.30pm (1430 AEDT) today, but full details were not immediately available, another defence official said.

The goal in this first-of-its-kind mission was not just to hit the satellite but to obliterate a tank aboard the spacecraft carrying 450 kilograms of a toxic fuel called hydrazine. US officials have said the fuel would pose a potential health hazard to humans if it landed in a populated area. Although the odds of that were small even if the Pentagon had chosen not to try to shoot down the satellite, it was determined that it was worth trying to eliminate even that small chance. Officials said it might take a day or longer to know for sure if the toxic fuel was blown up.

Russia and China had expressed concern about the operation. The Russian Defence Ministry said it could be used as cover to test a new space weapon. But Washington insisted the operation was aimed purely at preventing people being harmed by the satellite's fuel load. Wreckage from the satellite was likely to pass over south-eastern Australia within an hour of the missile's launch.

The Russians and Chinese, cynics to a man, claim that this is just a thinly disguised anti-satellite weapons test (shame on them) - presumably playing tit-for-tat with the Chinese for their test last year. Kevin at Cryptogon is also of this opinion, further theorising that it could be linked to the recent spate of undersea cable cuttings, and pointing to a previous satellite knockdown in 1985.