Last night, the US fired a modified SM-3 anti-missile missile at a failed US spy satellite that was no longer functional and incapable of reentering Earth's atmosphere in a controlled fashion.
The missile hit and destroyed the satellite. Footage of the launch and subsequent destruction of the satellite can be found at CNN.
China, of all countries, is complaining about the US anti-satellite operation. China also wants a whole bunch of relevant data to the intercept.
That's quite rich, considering that China itself carried out an anti-satellite operation against one of its satellites that was still in orbit in July 2007 and then refused to acknowledge that it did carry out an anti-satellite intercept for two weeks. That anti-satellite mission actually did put other nearby satellites at risk of damage due to debris fired off by the collision between the anti-satellite missile and the satellite. That's not a concern here because the US spy satellite was in a decaying orbit.
What's the word in Chinese for this?
Oh yes, it's chutzpah.
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