Dang, good shooting. The Tracker must say that the Navy and all the engineers and contractors working for it came up with a pretty good bit of marksmanship, plunking that misbehaving reconnaissance satellite with an anti-missile missile on the first try. The satellite’s going maybe 17,000 miles per hour, the rising third stage of the Standard Missile 3 rocket (with its own motor still roaring? Dunno) was going really fast too, and bingo, perfect intersection. It’s not quite like hitting a bullet with a bullet, as the interceptor presumably has terminal steering jets or other ways to home in. But still. The US military-industrial complex does have some considerable chops.

We still don’t know where the debris went and how soon it will all reenter or where, but there’s not a whole lot more to say except: mission accomplished, technically. The logic remains a baffler. This is the underlying message in a sensible piece by Seth Borenstein for the AP, filed just a bit before this round of orbital skeet. A similar take, and a nod to suspicions of other motives than public safety, arises in Richard A. Lovett’s piece for National Geographic News. Sooo-o-o-o many pieces of satellites have come down to earth out of control, and so far so good. Why so much fuss for a little hydrazine does seem out of whack. Hmmm.

And, Seth and Rick, like writers of many other accounts, refer to “shooting down” the satellite. I have fussed about this before (earlier post). That is plain misleading. The missile scattered a satellite that was coming down anyway, spreading the pieces (including, one supposes, a shattered and far less worrisome fuel tank). It probably delayed the entry of some. We shot it. But we can’t take much credit for the down part.

Stories:

NY Times Thom Shanker does not say shoot down, preferring the simpler verb “struck” in the lede while the hed has it striking a spy satellite falling from its orbit ; Time Magazine Jeffrey Kluger keeps the doubts stirred in his piece, writing in the second graph that the Pentagon’s and White House’s rationale still is leaking water. This is a stylish piece, referring to the target as a “clay pigeon” that “never quite got its purchase on space” ; Reuters Andrew Gray has a fine report and also notes (surprise) that a round of cheers went up in the ship’s operations center when data indicated they’d clobbered the target ; Wash. Post Marc Kaufman, Josh White also, safely, say “hit” and “destroyed” and relay without challenge a military man’s belief that the overall mass of the target had been substantially reduced. Say what? ; lots more out there too.

On the political side China, lambasted last year for shattering one of its old satellites at much higher orbital altitude last year, is accusing the US of double standards. Many accounts have this angle, which is neatly reviewed in the UK by James Randerson at The Guardian.

Grist for the Mill: DOD Press Release ; DOD Photo Gallery .

-CP

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