A runaway spy satellite was blasted out of space by the US yesterday.
The bus-sized craft was shot down after fears its toxic fuel tank would survive re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere and then break up.
With just a 10-second window to hit its own 17,000mph satellite, USS Lake Erie fired a missile off Hawaii yesterday afternoon. The Pentagon said: "We're confident we hit it. Most debris will burn up on re-entry in 48 hours."
The strike, 130 miles above Earth, was branded dangerous by China. The US denied it was trying to hide secret technology.
1 SM-3 missile launched from a cruiser in the Pacific 2 Missile heads for collision with satellite, at a relative "closing" speed of around 22,000mph 3 Satellite comes in range close to edge of Earth's atmosphere, 130 miles up 4 Missile smashes fuel tank, freeing hydrazine into space 5 Most debris will burn up but some will be scattered over hundreds of miles
Over the past 50 years about 17,000 satellites and bits of space junk have re-entered the atmosphere, including the 78-ton Skylab space station in 1979 that left debris across Australia and in the Indian Ocean