America's decision to destroy a defunct spy satellite orbiting Earth by firing a missile into outer space provoked a diplomatic row today, with both China and Russia accusing the US of having carried out a covert weapons test.Covert? Hello! There was plenty of advance notice, and in fact the news was followed by the minute on all the cable outlets.
The Pentagon claimed that it had fired the missile from the Pacific Ocean to destroy the satellite - which was 133 miles above the Earth - purely because of potentially toxic hydrazine fuel on board the spacecraft which could harm humans.OK, you morons, here's the deal. Whether that may be the case, we only recently found out this satellite was defunct and was due to come crashing back to earth March 6.
However, Moscow and Beijing complained that the missile strike smacked of hypocrisy as the US had rejected a joint attempt by the two countries from banning weapons in outer space only a month ago.
Would you have preferred the possibility it landed on your soil and killed innocent people?
Maybe. Then you could accuse us of deliberately targeting you.
Or better yet, you could possibly glean some secret information from the wreckage.
I guess the ChiComs haven't received any secret missile technology since Bill Clinton has been out of office.
Poor babies.
And the European space firm Astrium suggested that the Pentagon might also have wanted to destroy the satellite to prevent information aboard falling into the hands of its rival powers, which American officials have denied.Check out Hot Air for the video link to the shootout. A beautiful sight to behold.
In a briefing today, Marine General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that the SM-3 missile had been launched from the USS Lake Erie in the Pacific at 10.26 pm local time (0326 GMT), and had struck the satellite at 22,000 miles per hour.
He said that it could take another 24-48 hours to know for sure that the tank containing the hydrazine had been destroyed - but added that the chances of any debris, or hazardous gasses, breaching the earth's atmosphere and harming humans below were remote.
"The intercept occurred. We are very confident that we hit the satellite," he said. "We also have a high degree of confidence that we got the tank."
He added that images of a fireball when the missile struck the satellite, which were shown to journalists, indicated that the hydrazine tank may have been struck. "We have a fireball, and given that there is no fuel, that would indicate that that is a hydrazine fire," he said.
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