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source: edition.cnn.com...
Without intervention, officials say, the satellite would fall to Earth on its own in early March. However, since it malfunctioned immediately after it was launched in December 2006, it has a full tank -- about 1,000 pounds -- of frozen, toxic hydrazine propellant.
Authorities said the fuel tank likely would survive re-entry and could disperse harmful or even potentially deadly fumes over an area the size of two football fields. Hydrazine is similar to chlorine or ammonia in that it affects the lungs and breathing tissue.
The goal is to strike the satellite in low orbit, just before it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere, at an altitude of about 150 miles. The missile will not carry a warhead. The idea is to blast the satellite apart on impact so that the hydrazine tank explodes.
The smaller debris would be more likely to burn up in the atmosphere. Most of the debris would re-enter the atmosphere within hours of impact, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has said.
The military has timed its shoot-down attempt so that resulting debris will tumble into the atmosphere and not interfere with other satellites, said Christina Rocca, a U.S. diplomat and expert on disarmament. Her comments were included in an online United Nations report on this month's Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Switzerland.
source:
edition.cnn.com...
It was unknown whether the missile hit its precise target -- the satellite's full fuel tank. The Department of Defense said it won't know for 24 hours whether the fuel tank had been hit.
"Debris will begin to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere immediately," the department said. "Nearly all of the debris will burn up on re-entry within 24-48 hours and the remaining debris should re-enter within 40 days."
However, even if the missile didn't score a direct hit, "any kind of hit provides a much better outcome than doing nothing at all," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.