Won’t this cause a debris cloud similar to the one the Chinese created, endangering the space station, etc.?
Near-Earth orbit spy satellite. Debris should enter atmosphere and burn up shortly after destruction. Space Center is further out in space.
OTOH, I’d scream with laughter if they “accidently” took out an communist spy-sat.
Memo to Putin: Ooops, my bad
Signed: Dubya
Depends on when and where they hit it. If they wait until the satellite is low enough that it's beginning to contact the atmosphere, then most of the little pieces resulting from a missile strike will burn up pretty quickly.
The resulting cloud of debris will be in the same decaying orbit as the original satellite. (Less a few bits and pieces that might get enough kinetic energy to move into a higher orbit.) The mess will burn up in the atmosphere. The Chinese blew up a satellite that was in a higher, more stable orbit. Their debris is also in that higher, more stable orbit.
Only of we shoot it down while it's still in orbit. If we fire when it's starting to bite into the atmosphere, all he pieces will deorbit too. Instead of one large object coming in, we get a meteor shower.
Depends where on its orbital decay it gets blown to pieces. The idea is to catch it on the way down so the pieces burn up during further reentry.
No, it's a lower orbit that will decay. Shooting it down will just ensure that it won't come down in one piece.
No. This satellite is already falling. Shooting it down means that you get to determine (roughly) where the pieces land. The pieces continue to fall after the explosion, after all.
In contrast, blowing up a satellite in a stable orbit means that a debris cloud is created.
Not if they wait until it is low enough. I think that was the complaint about the Chinese test. Where they shot, the debris field stayed in orbit for a long time. This thing is already pretty low so most of the debris should hit atmosphere fairly quickly, start dragging, and then that’s it.