Polish military to go on alert in case US satellite crashes



WARSAW, Feb 15 (AFP) Feb 15, 2008



Poland is to put its military on alert amid concerns that an errant US satellite could fall to earth if Washington fails with its plans to shoot it down, Defence Minister Bogdan Klich said Friday.

Klich said that Poland was among the countries which had been warned by the United States of the risk posed by the satellite, but added that the danger was "minimal".

Poland's chief of staff General Franciszek Gagor said that from next week the authorities had decided to "raise the alert level to high", in case parts of the satellite land on Polish territory.

The United States says the satellite is the size of a bus and contains a large quantity of hydrazine, an extremely toxic propellant.

The chemical could be dangerous to people on the ground if the satellite -- currently in Earth orbit but being pulled down by Earth's gravity -- does not burn up on re-entry, it says.

Washington says a US warship will fire a surface-to-air missile at the satellite at a specific point in its orbit that ensures any Earth-bound debris will splash into the ocean.

On Friday, Christina Rocca, US ambassador to the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, announced that the out-of-commission spy satellite would enter the Earth's atmosphere on or around March 6 if Washington failed to shoot it down.

Rocca said the satellite could land "in any region on the Earth's surface between 58.5 degrees North and 58.5 degrees South latitudes" -- in other words, anywhere on the planet except the polar regions.

Washington has denied suggestions that the shoot-down plan is aimed at protecting the satellite's technological secrets or at demonstrating US anti-satellite capability.

"This extraordinary engagement ... is not part of an anti-satellite development and testing programme," said Rocca.