Word: launchful
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Five minutes into its launch, the California rocket will release its mock warhead. The accompanying balloon will quickly inflate to its 6-ft.-plus diameter. Traveling less than a mile away from the mock warhead, the balloon is supposed to lure the interceptor away from its intended target. The warhead and the balloon, along with the container in which they rode into space, will reach a top speed of 14,700 m.p.h. and a peak altitude nearly 1,000 miles above the earth...
...minutes following the target's launch, the interceptor will receive updated maps as the mock warhead soars over the ocean. Then, like a thirsty traveler about to cross a desert, the interceptor will take a final gulp of data on its nemesis' whereabouts and expected route just before blasting off some 20 minutes after the California launch...
...stored in its memory chips. Having fixed its own location, the interceptor will turn its telescope toward the target's expected location. As the interceptor and mock warhead travel to within 500 miles of each other, the interceptor should pick up the warhead, along with the decoy balloon and launch container. From here on out--in the final 100 seconds--the interceptor will be on its own, getting no guidance from the ground. But it will still be getting help. At this point, the balloon, the designated hindrance, will become the sly helper...
...Friday's test, the big, bright balloon will be the major decoy. (The launch container will play a similar but subordinate role.) But even Pentagon officials acknowledge that the balloon will act more like a beacon that alerts the interceptor to the nearby presence of the real target. The Pentagon concedes the October test might not have succeeded if the decoy hadn't appeared so vivid to the interceptor's sensors. "The large balloon aided in acquisition of the target," Coyle says. "It is uncertain whether the interceptor could have achieved an intercept in the absence of the balloon...
...sensor's 65,000 pixels will feed signals into the interceptor's brain, where lightning-fast calculations involving heat, light, mass and motion are cranked into databases searching for the ballistic fingerprints of enemy warheads. As the interceptor rushes toward its possible targets (the warhead, the balloon and the launch container), it will keep them all within view for as long as possible before discarding the ones its computers say have the least likelihood of being the warhead...