MOSCOW, Feb 15: Russia is carefully tracking a crippled US spy satellite that Washington plans to destroy in the coming days, and agrees it could pose a threat if it crashed to Earth, a defence ministry official said on Friday.

“He’s not bluffing when he talks about the danger posed by this satellite,” the unnamed Russian official told Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies, referring to comments made on Thursday by General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.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 Earthbound debris will splash into the ocean. It denies the shoot down aims at protecting the satellite’s technological secrets or at demonstrating US anti-satellite capability. A senior Russian parliamentarian echoed the defence ministry’s concerns.

“The trajectory of the satellite’s descent is unclear, but there is every likelihood it could fall on Russian territory,” the deputy head of parliament’s defence committee, Igor Barinov, told Interfax. But Barinov also said he hoped Washington was not trying to flex its military muscles.

“If this is the Americans’ answer to China’s latest action in shooting down its faulty weather satellite, and if such a decision is aimed at demonstrating American power, then it could lead to a new escalation in the military sphere,” he warned.

In January 2007, China tested an anti-satellite missile against an old Chinese weather satellite. That operation sparked concerns of a military space race, as well as angry complaints that whirling debris from the smash-up could imperil low-orbiting satellites.

On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that Moscow and Beijing were proposing a new treaty banning the use of weapons in space.

The call was immediately rejected by the White House, which said ensuring compliance of such a deal was “impossible.”In France on Friday, space debris expert Marc Pircher said there seemed little risk that the planned shoot down would add to the growing problem of orbital junk.

Interception will take place at a height of 200 kilometres, where atmospheric molecules will brake debris trajectory and Earth’s intense gravitational pull will ensure that pieces burn up within a few weeks, he predicted.

“However, they have to be careful to ensure there is no impediment to working orbits, including by the International Space Station,” which orbits at a height of around 340 km, said Pircher, director of the Toulouse Space Centre, run by France’s National Centre for Space Research (CNES).—AFP