The Sunday Times - February 4 1996

Britain lies in path of rogue spy satellite

A ROGUE Chinese spy satellite has careered out of control and will crash
to Earth within the next few weeks from an orbit that takes it over the
British Isles.

The one-ton satellite, which passes over Britain and Ireland four or five
times a day, will turn into a fireball and hurtle to Earth some time in
the first two weeks of March, according to the scientists tracking it.
They will be unable to predict where it will strike until a few days
beforehand.

"It would cause devastation if it landed in a built-up area," said
Professor Alan Johnstone of the Mullard Space Science Laboratories at
University College London. "They do not know where it is going to land and
they cannot do anything to regain control. It could come down anywhere and
its orbit takes it over some of the Earth's most populated areas."

Unlike most satellites, FSW1 is designed to withstand the 1,200C of heat
generated around its hull by re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere at
18,000mph. It could still be travelling at well over a 1,000mph when it
hits the surface.

The Chinese launched FSW1 in October 1993. It was due to spend just a few
days photographing Earth from space, after which it should have jettisoned
a module containing its cameras and other equipment and returned to Earth
with the films.

Western space scientists believe the satellite's controllers activated its
rockets at the wrong moment, sending the re-entry module into an unstable
elliptical orbit. It now swings around the Earth every 100 minutes, dipping
into the upper atmosphere at its closest approach at 100 miles above the
Earth, then spinning 2,000 miles into outer space before starting its
return journey. Dr Richard Crowther, a senior scientist at the Defence
Research Agency, an arm of the Ministry of Defence at Farnborough,
Hampshire, said the rogue satellite was being kept under close
surveillance. "It spends much more time over areas of high latitude, which
includes the UK, northern Europe and north America, so that is probably
where it will land," he said.

Andrew Wilson, the editor of Jane's Space Directory, has followed the fate
of FSW1 ever since the Chinese lost control of it. "The chances are it
will fall in the ocean, simply because it covers 70% of the Earth's
surface, but we have to be cautious. Its orbit also takes it over a huge
part of the world's population."

Some western space scientists have spent months trying to work out whether
FSW1 will survive the impact. They believe that obtaining the films it
contains would be an intelligence coup, showing what the Chinese were
spying on and how much they were able to see. The chances, however, could
be slim; FSW1 is a primitive craft by modern standards, so primitive that,
according to Jane's, its heat shield is made from oak planks.

"It may survive the trip through the atmosphere, but the impact with the
surface will almost certainly reduce it to fragments," said one scientist.

Nick Johnson, a specialist in space debris and obsolete satellites who
works as a consultant with the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (Nasa), said it would leave a crater up to 30ft wide and
20ft deep. "The chances of it hitting a built-up area are, however, very
low," he said.

Most of the tracking has been done by the United States Space Command
(UNSC) in Colorado Springs, which follows nearly 9,000 orbiting man-made
objects through 11 radar stations around the world. Its main aim is to
prevent their re-entry being mistaken for ballistic missile warheads, thus
triggering a nuclear alert, but it also provides foreign governments with
an early warning service. Its scientists hope to be able to give several
days' warn ing of where FSW1 will crash-land.

Lieutenant-Colonel Jim House, UNSC's chief of space operations, said the
satellite's orbit was already deteriorating daily. "Last Monday it came
within 99 miles of Earth, but by Friday that had decreased to 96 miles. It
is suffering increasing drag from the upper atmosphere, which will pull it
down even faster."

Several orbiting objects have plunged to Earth. In 1978 there were
worldwide protests when the Soviets' nuclear-powered Cosmos 954 satellite
came down over northern Canada, blazing a trail of radioactive debris
across the tundra.

In 1979 20 tons of the American Skylab station smashed into the Australian
outback. Large chunks of the Russian Salyut 7 space station also crashed
into South American forests, starting several fires. One piece was
reported to have fallen into the back garden of a house where an Argentine
woman was doing her ironing.

So far, however, there are no known human victims of space debris and the
only confirmed casualty was a cow in Cuba that was killed outright by a
falling rocket motor in the mid-1960s.

Crowther said: "There's not much reason for anyone in Britain to worry. We
think that people stand slightly more chance of winning the national
lottery than of being hit by this satellite."

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