Metropol

You'll have heard about USA193, the satellite that didn't work when launched, which the Americans are planning to shoot down tonight before it crashes to earth itself.

Here's the graphic published by the Belfast Telegraph to accompany this story.



Presumably they paid Chris Morris and The Day Today team something for it...

If only in homage alone... that is both saddening and hilarious at the same time.

ROFL!

Fabulous!

It's going to be raining nuts and bolts up and down central Australia as well.

The US government still hasn't paid the littering fine for the debris from Skylab all those years ago so I suspect that attempts at getting compensation will be futile.

EDIT: News.com.au handle the story with their trademark sublety:
http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata ... 433,00.jpg

That illustration is fab!

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I like how some in the US are now taking this as proof that their missile defence system works. I'm not an expert, but I suspect shooting down a satellite which you know is falling and have been able to make plans to deal with is slightly different to having to defend yourself from a missile fired at you by an enemy state without direct warning. But maybe I'm missing something.

I cynically think that the reason for shooting it down isn't due to the fuel but because they don't know where it may land, and they don't want others to be able to see what technology is within the satellite. Blowing it to pieces ensures that others can't easily get their hands on it. I dread to think how much junk is floating around our planet.

Charlie Wells wrote:I cynically think that the reason for shooting it down isn't due to the fuel but because they don't know where it may land, and they don't want others to be able to see what technology is within the satellite. Blowing it to pieces ensures that others can't easily get their hands on it.

There's probably more than an element of truth to that. It was a spy satellite - it's not unreasonable to expect that it might have some 'secret' technology on it that the US wouldn't want others to get their hands on.

I dread to think how much junk is floating around our planet.

Well, as I understand it, the debris from this satellite will come back to earth (or burn up in the atmosphere) within the next week or two, so it shouldn't add to the space junk orbiting the planet. You raise a valid poin though, and The Economist had an interesting report on this recently. I think it's an issue that's attracted a lot of attention since the Chinese blew up an old weather satellite in January. That incident resulted in a significant increase in the detritus floating around earth - and that stuff could be up there for up to 100 years. The fundamental problem is we don't have any rules on 'littering' in space. It might be reckless and irresponsible, but there's nothing stopping any country from doing it at the moment.