Satellite shoot-down plan provokes concern from Russia

US government officials formally briefed the international press on Thursday regarding their plans to use a missile defense interceptor to shoot down a bus-sized spy satellite that will re-enter Earth's atmosphere in the next week. And the plan is already provoking concern in the Russian Federation.

Officials from the White House, the Pentagon, and NASA formally announced the plan to shoot down the satellite sometime in the next week by launching a missile interceptor from one of the Navy's Aegis cruisers. The three officials insisted that their efforts to inform foreign governments of the plan demonstrated that this operation was being conducted for the purposes of safety, and not to demonstrate an anti-satellite weapon capability.

"What we're doing today is to reach out to the various U.N. organizations, the U.N. headquarters itself and essentially the entire international community, through capitals, to let them know more details about the satellite coming down, and about our plan to intercept it," said James Jeffrey, the Deputy National Security Adviser, in a Thursday press conference. "And, of course, these countries may or may not have comments. They may or may not have supportive statements, and we'll see." The Russian Federation seems to be the first government to sound off on the mission. A report in RIA Novosti, a government-linked news service, showed Russian authorities not only worrying about the implications of the launch, but questioning the publicly stated justification of preventing poisonous rocket fuel from raining down on the planet. Raw Story