Spy Satellite Shootdown -- Your Billion Dollar Tax Contribution Hits the Earth

The 5,000-pound National Reconnaissance Office surveillance satellite was pronounced dead just a few hours after it made into orbit, on Dec. 14, 2006. This January, the U.S. military realized that the satellite was beginning its descent down into the atmosphere. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be much cause for concern; objects of this size plummet into the Earth's atmosphere all the time. But this satellite contains a full tank -- over 1,000 pounds' worth -- of the rocket propellant hydrazine. And there's a small but real risk that the tank could rupture, releasing a "toxic gas" over a populated area, causing a risk to human life. So the Navy scheduled its very first "anti-satellite" mission to shoot for February 20, during the hours of a full lunar eclipse.

The folks over at Analytical Graphics and Applied Defense Solutions have put together a simulation for the Pentagon (and the rest of us) of how it's likely to happen -- and where the debris goes afterwards:





What makes this sim special is the injection of real-world physics. Unlike the zippy little animations you get to see on the evening news, every piece of debris in this satellite shoot-down model has been given its own mass, area, speed, velocity and drag.

Not every element of this particular model is hyper-realistic, however. AGI put together the sim based on the Pentagon's assertion that 50 percent of the debris would burn up in the atmosphere during the first two passes. Debris is uniformly distributed (although changes in velocity and direction are more natural).

Still, this is about as realistic a simulation you're going to see -- until that Navy cruiser takes its shot. Good enough for me, if they don't miss. They didn't.

Cybercast credit: YouTube