UPDATE 1-US official minimizes debris from satellite shot

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By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON, March 19 (Reuters) - The shooting apart of a crippled U.S. spy satellite last month created no significant new space debris, with all but small bits burning on re-entry to the atmosphere, the mission commander said Wednesday.

"We thought there would be much larger pieces," Rear Admiral Alan Hicks, who heads the Pentagon's Aegis ballistic missile defense program, said in the most comprehensive report yet on the destruction of the satellite known as USA-193.

In fact, none of the debris was larger than a football, he told a briefing at an annual conference of the U.S. Navy League, a booster group for the navy.

"That was a very very good thing," Hicks said, citing the force of a collision at about 22,000 miles per hour (35,000 km per hour) between the satellite, tumbling and rolling in decaying orbit, and the Raytheon Co (RTN.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) ship-launched Standard Missile-3 that slammed into its fuel tank.

The Bush administration has said its goal was to protect populated areas from the spacecraft's unused supply of deadly hydrazine propellant by destroying it in space. Minimizing the debris field was a secondary objective, he said.

"We achieved both," said Hicks, of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency.

The satellite and its fuel tank were destroyed on Feb. 20 153 miles (250 km) over the Pacific using arms designed for the ship-based leg of a multibillion-dollar shield against ballistic missiles.