Team ready to chase satellite’s remnants

Many members of the team have experience in similar situations involving locating debris over a large territory and cleaning up hazardous materials, such as recovery operations after the space shuttle Columbia explosion or the 2004 cleanup of an oil spill that dumped thousands of gallons of crude in the Delaware River.

If called into action, team members would don hazardous materials suits to guard against hydrazine on the ground or in the air, and wear breathing apparatuses to avoid the fumes. If the fuel leaked, they would use booms and absorbent material similar to cat litter to collect as much of it as possible.

Other factors that could come into play will be whether the fuel leaked into sand, which tends to be very porous, or clay, which can absorb the material, said Duane Newell, 44, a chemist with the EPA who's part of the response team. Or the fuel tank could land near a river or creek, contaminating the water supply.

"There's a whole gamut of possibilities that have to be assessed," Newell said. "It's a significant challenge based on a number of unknowns."

On the chance that satellite debris falls in a hostile environment such as Iraq or Afghanistan, the unit has been outfitted with helmets and body armor. Team members also have been vaccinated against diseases such as yellow fever and armed with anti-malarial pills.

A

Video   U.S. loses control of spy satellite Jan. 28: A U.S. intelligence agency loses control of a spy satellite after it loses power. NBC's Tom Costello has the details. Today show

nother concern is making sure that people on the ground aren't exposed to the fuel. Security teams would travel with the task force to help keep people away from the debris once it's found, and the State Department has been putting the word out to other countries to let them know about the satellite problem so they can warn citizens to stay away from it.

"The likelihood of us being first on the ground are not high," said Coast Guard Lt. j.g. Frank Kulesa, 27, who would lead a small team going out to find the satellite's fuel tank when and if it crashes to Earth.

The operation has some similarities with the recovery effort launched after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry in 2003, killing the seven astronauts on board and spreading debris over a 500-mile stretch of land from Texas to Louisiana, said Paul Lockhart, 51, a NASA astronaut who helped direct that recovery effort and who's advising on this operation.

However, he said that this time officials have a much better idea of where the debris might land. As a result, he feels the team could get to the site and begin their recovery operation a lot faster than they did with Columbia.

"It's not going to be three weeks," Lockhart said, referring to the time it took to get the Columbia recovery effort up to full speed. "It's going to be hours."

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