Bullseye!

As I noted in yesterday afternoon’s post, the U.S. Navy planned that evening (shortly after the successful re-entry and touchdown of the Space Shuttle Atlantis) to attempt destruction of a failing spy satellite, via a three-stage RIM-161 SM-3 missile launched from the USS Lake Erie northwest of Hawaii. I was happily surprised to log onto Yahoo! News late last night and discover that the interception undertaking was successful, to the extent that the Navy now strongly believes (but as I write these words has not yet definitively concluded) that the satellite’s fuel tank containing 1,000 pounds of hazardous hydrazine was also obliterated by the non-explosive ‘kill vehicle’ at the missile’s tip.

The statistics are pretty mind-boggling. The satellite, USA 193, was roughly the size of a school bus and weighted approximately 5,000 lbs, according to Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At the time of the missile launch, the satellite was in uncontrolled orbit approximately 153 miles above the U.S.S. Erie, slicing through space at greater than 17,000 MPH. The combined impact speed of the satellite and missile, ~3 minutes after the latter’s launch, was estimated at 22,783 MPH.

My congratulations go out to the hard-working engineering community in creating the innumerable systems whose successful inter-operation led to this achievement. A special acknowledgement was earned by the coders who, with very little lead time, re-wrote the firmware for the missile and its partnering launch and tracking systems, to enable them to more accurately target a ‘cold’ satellite versus the ‘hot’ ICBMs (which travel at half the speed of the USA 193 satellite, and at much lower elevations above terra firma, to boot) that the system was originally designed to hunt.

Granted, my first engineering job was with a government defense contractor, so achievements like this have a particularly warm spot in my heart…and I’m not (necessarily…ahem) implying that last night’s mission suggests a broadening of the U.S. military’s defensive and offensive capabilities into the anti-satellite realm. What are your thoughts on last night’s events, readers?