US satellite shootdown debris said gone from space

By Jim Wolf

ORLANDO, Fla., Feb 27 (Reuters) - No debris remains in space from the U.S. destruction a year ago of an errant spy satellite loaded with toxic hydrazine fuel, the head of the Pentagon's Strategic Command said.

By contrast, some of the debris caused when China used a ground-based ballistic missile to destroy one of its defunct weather satellites will stay in orbit for another 80 or 90 years, said Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, the command's chief.

"Every bit of debris created by that (U.S.) intercept has de-orbited," Chilton told a symposium on air warfare hosted by the U.S. Air Force Association in Orlando, Florida, on Thursday.

The U.S. military used a ship-launched Raytheon Co (RTN.N) Standard Missile-3 missile to destroy a crippled National Reconnaissance Office satellite on Feb. 20, 2008. It was shot apart at an altitude of about 130 miles.

The intercept was interpreted by many analysts as a demonstration of U.S. capabilities in response to a Chinese anti-satellite test a year earlier. The Chinese satellite had been in polar orbit at an altitude of about 537 miles. Since it was higher up, it will take longer for the debris to re-enter the earth's atmosphere.

Space junk is a threat to the 800 or so commercial and military satellites estimated to be operating in space as well as to the International Space Station.

The Strategic Command, which coordinates U.S. military operations in space, said it is now tracking about 2,200 pieces of orbiting junk created by the Chinese anti-satellite demonstration in January 2007

Chilton, in a followup session with reporters, said the last bits of debris from the U.S. intercept, which he said had been codenamed Burnt Frost, de-orbited as early as last July or August.