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US missile hits satellite carrying toxic fuel

A US Naval vessel hit a rogue spy satellite with a lone missile strike into space that appeared to have succeeded in destroying its tank of highly toxic fuel, defense officials said on Wednesday.

A network of radar systems and satellites designed for the US missile defense system confirmed that the successful interception occurred some 247km over the Pacific Ocean.

A senior Pentagon official said the missile appeared to have struck the targeted fuel tank containing hydrazine, which could have leaked potentially lethal toxic gas over a wide area if it had survived re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.

"All indications are that the mission was a complete success. The missile appears to have destroyed the fuel tank. We will need some time to confirm the extent of destruction, but it looks good," the official said.

The operation raised concerns that the US was trying to test an anti-satellite weapon, amid rising global tensions about the militarization of space.

China responded swiftly, calling on Washington to provide more information and warning of potential international consequences.

"China is continuing to closely follow the possible harm caused by the US action to outer space security and relevant countries," foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao (劉建超) said.

China caused an international outcry when it shot down one of its own weather satellites on Jan. 11 last year in what was widely seen as an anti-satellite test.

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave the go-ahead for the missile strike as he flew from Washington to Honolulu, a base for the three AEGIS warships involved in the intercept attempt.

The USS Lake Erie, a guided missile cruiser, fired a single modified tactical SM-3 missile that hit the schoolbus-sized satellite, which was traveling at more than 11,265kph, the Pentagon said.

The objective was to hit a tank containing almost 500kg of hydrazine fuel.

Satellite debris will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere immediately because of the relatively low altitude at which the satellite was intercepted, and most will burn up on re-entry within two days, the Pentagon said. But it could take up to 40 days for all the debris to re-enter.

Russia's defense ministry said on Sunday that the US plans looked like a veiled weapons test and an "attempt to move the arms race into space."

A leading Chinese newspaper yesterday accused the US of hypocrisy in criticizing other nations' space ambitions while rejecting a proposed space treaty and firing a missile to destroy one of its own satellites.

Earlier this month, Russia and China proposed a treaty to ban weapons in space and the use or threat of force against satellites and other spacecraft. But Washington rejected the proposal as unworkable and said it instead favors confidence-building efforts, the New York Times reported.

The Chinese Communist Party's newspaper, the People's Daily, accused the US of dangerous space ambitions and double standards.

"The United States will not easily abandon its military advantage based on space technology, and it is striving to expand and fully exploit this advantage," said the front-page commentary in the overseas edition of the paper, which came out before Washington announced one of its missiles had hit the satellite.

"The United States, the world's top space power, has often accused other countries of vigorously developing military space technology, but faced with the Chinese-Russian proposal to restrict space armaments, it runs in fear from what it claimed to love," it said.

The paper said Washington was "desperately trying to explain away" its satellite shoot-down as being "for purely non-military objectives."

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