America confident about destruction of satellite

The U.S. military is said to be “confident” that the destruction of the failed U.S. spy satellite went off without a hitch.

This morning the military fired an SM-3 missile into the sky from somewhere off the coast of Hawaii in hopes of intercepting a satellite, which was headed for Earth and was expected to collide in early March.

At first the military assured us there was nothing to worry about. The satellite would burn up on re-entry and even if there were some bits here and there that survived entry into the atmosphere the likelihood that they would hit land would be slim. All these oceans we’ve got all over the place were bound to come in handy, right ?

Well, things sort of went a bit off course when it was announced that the satellite might actually hit land. Oh and not just any land, North American soil.

President Bush then gave orders for the satellite to be shot down. However, there was more to come.

It was then revealed that the fuel tank (and it was pretty close to full given the fact that the satellite failed so quickly after it was launched) contained a highly toxic type of rocket fuel. Hydrazine is more than a bit dangerous and can cause harm to anyone who comes into contact with it. Officials said there was about 500kg (1000 pounds) of it on the satellite.

Given the toxicity of the fuel (similar to ammonia and smoking, it aint to kind on the lungs) the plan was to aim a missile at the fuel tank. Experts said the fuel tank could more than likely survive re-entry and there’d be more than a bit of a problem if it did so it clearly wouldn’t do to just hit the satellite. In the wee hours of this morning the missile was launched and roughly three minutes later there was a big badaboom.

Marine General, James E Cartwright, has said that while they can’t be 100 percent sure about having hit the fuel tank, there was a fireball and a cloud of fumes believed to be Hydrazine along with spectral analysis indicating hydrazine in space. So far there are no debris bigger than a football, none of which have survived re-entry.

The U.S. military has warned countries they feel the debris could pose a risk to.

Click play to watch the video of the rather anticlimactic interception.