Satellite May Be Shot Down Feb 20

U.S. to blast satellite after space shuttle leaves

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will have the chance to shoot down a disabled U.S. spy satellite from next Wednesday, after the space shuttle Atlantis ends its current mission, a U.S. general said on Friday.
"The window will open when the shuttle is on the ground," said Army Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, director of operations for the Pentagon's Joint Staff."

This story keeps getting more suspicious by the day. The honchos sure seem to be very worried about something on this object that they're telling us is a spy satellite and I doubt very much if it's hydrazine like they say:

"Hydrazine is a very simple chemical that contains nitrogen and hydrogen,” Kenneth Ramos, a University of Louisville molecular biologist and VP of the Society of Toxicology, tells the Health Blog. It looks like water, more or less, and smells like ammonia."

Apparently it's not nearly as toxic as they claim although you really don't want to drink it or even inhale it. I've read that it easily breaks down, and workers at plants merely spray it with water to mop up a spill. In any case the stuff would most likely burn up during a fiery re-entry, so dire warnings are meant to keep people away from debris for some other reason. Top secret gizmos? Pictures of Planet X?

The shoot down is controversial too. They claim that it's in low enough orbit so that the shattered debris will enter the atmosphere in short order, yet they're worried about the shuttle. With my elementary understanding of physics, wouldn't an exploding craft in orbit explode upward as well as in other directions, spreading space junk that could collide with other craft? Russia seems to think it's a ruse for testing an anti-satellite weapon.

It could be that this thing has plutonium on board although a lot of sources claim those small Lightweight Radioisotope Heater Units (LWRHUs) are only used on interplanetary probes, and earth orbiting satellites use only solar power. Whatever the reason is, such clear concern from the bigwigs is unusual. Skylab was an uncontrolled re-entry and crashed in 1979 and I don't remember such concern back then, but possibly that was because they didn't have the technology to shoot it down. Maybe this thing has proof of UFOs aboard.

added - Then again, maybe the satellite is full of radioactive death. This is an email sent to UrbanSurvival:

"Plutonium 238 is/was used as a primary fuel in spy satellites. The hydrazine story is a smokescreen. Pu238 decays so fast (88-yr half-life) it is used to produce thermoelectricity by a process that boils a liquid and the condensation of the liquid (mercury used to be used) creates a thermal-gradient voltage. Two immense plants were under construction a couple of years ago, I believe either in Idaho or Montana to produce kilograms of Pu238 . As I remember these plants would need many tons of purified uranium in special reactors to produce kilograms of the stuff. It has no use except in satellites or on long-term space shots. The Russians were experimenting with Pu241, which is a beta emitter having a half-life of only 14 years, but it was literally “too hot to handle” except, maybe, as a weapon. Bulk grams of Pu238 are red hot for years. Pu241 is difficult to produce and forms hot plasma but its powerful beta emissions made its oxide as a coating a candidate for electrodes in satellite batteries.
A microgram of any of the Pu species lodged in a lung can produce cancer from both or either chemical and radioactive reactions."