Pentagon thinks they’ve hit satellite’s fuel tank

WASHINGTON – The missile that took down a disabled spy satellite last week almost certainly destroyed a tank filled with potentially harmful hydrazine fuel, the Pentagon said Monday.

“By all accounts this was a successful mission,” Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a statement. “From the debris analysis, we have a high degree of confidence the satellite’s fuel tank was destroyed and the hydrazine has been dissipated.”

The conclusion was based on a study of the debris field, the statement said. The Pentagon also has video shot from the missile warhead as it approached the satellite, McClatchy Newspapers reported, but that video is not being released.

Soon after the satellite was hit, the Pentagon made available a video taken from a different vantage point showing an explosion as the missile struck the satellite.

The 5,000-pound satellite was struck by a Standard Missile-3, launched from a Navy cruiser in the north Pacific, as it orbited about 150 miles above Earth. The Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., is tracking fewer than 3,000 pieces of debris from the strike, all smaller than a football, the Pentagon said. Most of the debris has already entered the Earth’s atmosphere and burned up or will do so soon.

The Pentagon said there have been no reports of debris landing on Earth and “it is unlikely any will remain intact to impact the ground.”