美國警告控制間諜衛星下跌

保羅・哈里斯

一個大美國間諜衛星在以後月預計下落接地某個時候，官員昨天認為。

它是不明的空間殘骸也許下來的地方，但它在二月下旬或3月可能擊中地面。 它也不知道衛星是否可能包含潛在地危險物料，例如一臺核能發動的反應器。

官員認為他們丟失了對衛星的控制和通知了國家在世界範圍內關於潛在問題。 ‘Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the threat … we are looking at potential options to mitigate any damage this satellite may cause,’ National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe told the AP news agency.

Johndroe declined to say whether such measures could include shooting down the satellite with a missile.

China recently conducted such an operation by destroying one of its own satellites from Earth to test a space missile system. However, that move created a cloud of fragments and other satellites had to be manoeuvred into new orbits to avoid being hit by the debris.

Other satellites have fallen to earth harmlessly before. In 2002 parts of a science satellite rained down over the Persian Gulf. The largest re-entry took place when Skylab, a 78-ton abandoned space laboratory belonging to Nasa, fell from orbit in 1979. It came down in a fiery mass of debris that fell mainly into the Indian Ocean and onto Australia.

No one was harmed in what was a media sensation. One San Francisco newspaper offered a reward for anyone who brought a piece of Skylab to its newsroom. The $10,000 prize was collected by a young Western Australian man who found a piece of it on his roof in the small town of Esperance and travelled to America with it.

In 2000 Nasa engineers brought down a much smaller satellite into a distant part of the Pacific Ocean. That is likely to not be possible in this case as the object has lost all power and propulsion. This makes it impossible to dictate where or when the satellite will come down - or if it will just burn up in the atmosphere.

One of the most disturbing examples of space pollution occurred in a type of Soviet satellite launched from 1967 to 1988. The Rorsat-class reconnaissance satellites contained a nuclear reactor as a power source. It was later shown that 16 of 31 Rorsats had been leaking potentially radioactive coolant into space, creating a trail of droplets in orbit.

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