Gizmodo

Cool..?

USA! USA! USA!

They still need a day to confirm that the pesky fuel tank was destroyed.

You mean the fuel tank that couldn't have stayed intact through the 50g re-entry? The one that was their flimsy excuse for playing with their satellite shooting missiles so they could be like China and show off that the US can shoot down a satellite.

Missed the lunar eclipse. Man. My lifetime is seeing amazing things happen.

@Skeptic: Yea. Another thing to blast out the old RED, WHITE and BLUE.

@Skeptic: Yup... That's the one.

Crap crap crap...I had my cam out for the eclipse at this time.

What sky was this in? I think I saw something frickin moving through the eastern sky from south to north...but wasn't sure that was it since I thought it was postponed :(

Lunar pics were a success though :D

@Skeptic:

The china stunt was different. To maintain control the Chinese government pulls nationalistic stunts every now and then. This incident with the US was legitimate. Multiple nations approached the US about this and practically told the US to shoot it down.

Next we should shoot down our sell phone satellites and tv ones just for fun and live like that one episode of Dilbert where after 5 min of that happening we were back in the Renaissance!

@Skeptic: Technically China didn't shoot their satellite down, they just blasted it into thousands of pieces of space junk that are still in orbit.

America! Fuck Yeah! Baseball! Fuck Yeah! Shooting down spy satellites! Fuck Yeah!

New England Patriots = Whew, now everyone can get off our asses!

yay for blowing up satalites!!

@Skeptic: The US had already shot down a satellite. They shot one down with a missile launched from an F-15 some years before China pulled their stunt.

Anyway, this wasn't to do with hyrazine IMO. It was preventing secrets about US spy satellites getting in to the wrong hands. Anyone who thinks the Hubble is the biggest telescope in space is wrong!

i thought they were gonna "accidentally" miss the satellite and end up hitting a russian or chinese one instead

Tell Master Chief we ain't going to need him. The flood has been contained.

I felt a great disturbance in the atmosphere, as if millions of transistors suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something slamtastic has happened.

@IUSEAMACSOSUEME:

Books!...fuck yeah??

FUCK YEAH AMERICA!! Thats how we roll motherfuckers!! God bring on alien invaders we dont give a fuck we'll torch anybody and anything!!

@GiltProto: best. comment. evar. and ya beat me to it! :P

Did anyone else notice in the stories they say they did it "at about 10:26 p.m. EST" which was about exactly the time for the total lunar exclipse?! Coincidence? I think not.

Also, they say that the majority of the debris will be falling into the atmosphere within the next four days... that sounds like a ripe invitation to head outside and watch for an impromptu meteor-shower-style debris shower over the next few nights. Especially if you were in the projected ground path of the satellite, before being blown to bits.

I'm sorry but shooting missiles at friggin satellites beats Crysis (or Doom) any day.

The only thing that could possibly beat it? Shooting friggin laser beams instead.

@TJ: You are very extremely right, they shouldve shot it down with a giant laser for triple bonus points.

@ry_ry: "I think I saw something frickin moving through the eastern sky from south to north"

Unless you live on a houseboat in the middle of the Pacific, you saw something else.

The eclipse was obscured by hazy clouds here :( although that actually made it easier to see the color change from the red shadow moving across the face, which was kind of interesting. :) Luckily lunar eclipses are not that rare- the next one is in a couple years. The next total solar eclipse visible in the US doesn't happen until 2017.

I think I saw it come down.....

Or coincedentally I saw a shooting star at near the exact same time (Hadn't checked the time, but eclipse was nearly through).

This is coming from the big ol' frozen piece of land known as Alberta, Canada.

@LastVigilante: "Especially if you were in the projected ground path of the satellite, before being blown to bits. "

I would think that projected path has completely changed now that they've blown the thing up and changed the atmospheric drag and broken up the mass and whatnot.

@superbad: Thats probably totally possible, though this 'computer simulation' video appears to suggest it will remain on the same path, only in fragments: [www.space.com]

I'm sure the chances are less than one percent that anyone will see any re-entry debris (please let me be the one percent!) but I'm often reminded of the footage of the MIR re-entry, the unfortunate Columbia re-entry disaster, and even this little nugget I found on the web which was supposedly a failed Russan Rocket breaking up on re-entry over Colorado, caught by news cameras: [www.myfoxcolorado.com]

ry_ry: "Lunar pics were a success though"

Hook it up yo!

anyone else hear 99 Luftballoons playing in the background?

@AlexEmerald: coincidentally my wife and I also saw a fairly bright shooting star while watching the eclipse, but it was closer to 8:00pm CST (Saskatchewan) closer to the start of the eclipse, and according to the NY Times the missile wan't even launched until 9:30pm our time (8:30 your time), so what I saw must have been an unrelated meteor.

operation: destroy evil eclipse demons with toxic gas explosion is a success!! take that evil space monsters!

It's all a damn Conspiracy! That satellite had first contact with aliens, and they needed to blow it up to get rid of the alien bodies....

@Sloth: XD, and global warming and seals blood was killed too!! AREA 51!!!! ROSEWELL!!

Fun comments, but no matter how ya cut it, shooting something moving 17,000 MPH is just freaking COOL!!!

Nobody can blow shit up like we can.

@grok666: I agree, 100%.

I'm glad we hit that sat.
Maybe now it'll keep the other ones in line.

The eclipse was great last night.
I hauled a couple of telescopes outside and the seeing was fantastic from our backyard.
We enjoyed it (and Irish coffee) quite a bit.

(Gotta be prepared for this stuff man.)

@--Tito--: That wouldn't be tough considering cell phones communicate via towers on the ground... unless you are using a sat. phone, but I don't think those are considered cell phones.

why didnt hey just go up there and fix it like other people do?
also why did they do this during the lunar eclipse?

so wait it only cost 10 mil then instead of the predicted 50?

@demonwolf: Plus the cost of launch, observation, and tracking. The actual total cost? Who knows.

there was a LUNAR ECLIPSE??????
WHERE WAS I?

Re: Eclipse pics... Check these out (scroll down to see some cool multiple exposure shots).

[www.fredmiranda.com]

All of these are not mine - mine were all complete garbage.

@Skeptic: you sound... skeptical.

So they are polluting space now????? Ohhh now I know why the world is gonna end..

@hagrun: Once the communications satellite goes down, it wont be able to redirect calls to other states. Towers go to communications station, station goes to satellite, satellite beams it to another communications station. If that is correct.