Spy satellite

I have worked in the Spacecraft field for almost 20 years (16 of it for the NAVY) , designing, testing and building spacecraft.

I do not consider a scud missle traveling at a several times the speed of sound as "slow". They are slow compared to more modern missles, but still going along extremely fast compared to the tartgets our systems were designed to hit (sub-sonic aircraft). Something with a total flighht time of a few minutes, makes consistantly hitting the target a big challenge. The problem our forces found in hitting SCUD missles was due mostly to the erratic flight many of them took due to numerous issues with the old beat up missles the Iraqi's were using.

Hitting a spacecraft traveling at 17,000 mph (very fast also) sounds difficult and it is, but the fact the target is in orbit and traveling along a predictable flight path over 100 miles away traveling towards you helps make this a pretty good target for a radar guided missle.

I doubt they used a laser, maybe on the SCI-FI channel but not in real life.


I am glad they hit it.

Bob