Malfunctioning spy satellite USA 193 is due to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on or about March 6th–that is, unless the US Navy shoots it down first. On Feb. 14th, the Pentagon announced plans on to destroy the satellite with a missile. The nominal reason: to prevent a tank of hydrazine fuel from reaching the ground where it might spread a toxic cloud around the impact site. Meanwhile, sky watchers in Europe and North America are watching the doomed pinpoint of light orbit over their backyards–for how much longer? No one knows.

The satelitte was not “shot down.” It was broken, with violence, into many pieces that have been scattered away from the original path of the satelitte. Pieces of debris being blasted away at a couple hundred miles an hour still leaves the main vector of this debris the original orbit (about 16,000 miles per hour).

Some of these pieces will be flung ahead, some behind, some up, maybe some down( I think the missile’s vector may preclude this.

The predictions for the orbit at heaves-above are still valid as a reference point for this cloud of debris, and I imagine the best chance to see any re-entry sparks will trail a few minutes behind the place where the entact body would have been. IE, look for break-ups when the satelitte should have just passed over your location.

A group of us spotted the last transit over Edmonton, exactly as predicted at 17:09:45 MST just below Orion. We waited for the next predicted transit and of course there was none. So, we carried on with taking Lunar Eclipse photos when someone confirmed from CNN on their Blackberry that it was shot down. =)

One would not have felt or heard anything from the shoot down. Especially not from the mainland and I rather doubt even from Hawaii. As for size comparisons. This is tiny compared to Mir. Nothing would be left except small bits that we’ll see burn up in the atmosphere over the next little while. As one suggested, all anyone may have seen tonight besides the eclipse is a few meteors and if they felt anything it was likely a tractor trailor or polar bear near their homes.