Remember that crazy rogue satellite that was threatening to fall back to earth and cause all sorts of lulz by spreading ultra-toxic hydrazine rocket fuel over populated areas? And remember that time the US Navy shot it down with a missile, as seen in the video above, allowing every one to live happily ever after in absolute safety from falling space junk? Well apparently, it’s not quite that cut and dry:

Last week’s Pentagon operation to bring down a falling spy satellite may have been widely termed a “shootdown” of precision accuracy — but the reality is more complex, and much messier.

The article goes on to explain “5 myths” surrounding the Satellite “shootdown,” the first of which is the idea that the satellite was shot down in the first place:

Myth No. 1: The Navy missile shot down the satellite.

Reality: Hitting a satellite with a missile is not at all like hitting a bird with a bullet and watching it plummet to the ground. An orbiting satellite stays in orbit not because of its power or guidance, but merely because of its forward speed. An attack that does not substantially change that orbital velocity cannot drive the satellite out of orbit, no matter how much physical damage it does.

The only practical way to remove such targets from orbit is by slowing them down. In practice, that occurs as a result of air drag, an effect that can take hours, weeks, or centuries depending on the thickness of the air at the satellite’s altitude. Breaking a big spacecraft into smaller pieces does increase the effects of air drag — as demonstrated dramatically last week — but it is the key role of air drag that makes the critical causal link between “shooting” and “downing” the target.

Worth checking out if, like me, you’re at all concerned about shit falling out of the sky on your fucking head.

Despite sounding less than optimistic about their plan to blow up an errant satellite threatening to come back to earth and kill a bunch of Earth people with its deadly rocket fuel, the US Navy successfully shot down the satellite with a SM-3 missle Wednesday, saying with “high confidence” that the missile destroyed the satellite’s fuel tank. Check out the footage and feel warm in the knowledge that our trillions of dollars in defense budgeting are being used to keep us safe….from our own satellites.