America has warned ships and planes in the Pacific to look out as it prepares to shoot down a wayward satellite carrying an almost full tank of highly toxic fuel tomorrow, it emerged last night.

Senior military officers plan to make the attempt within hours of the US space shuttle Atlantis landing in Florida today.

US officials said last night the plan was to fire a missile that would release a "kinetic kill vehicle", a non-explosive device on a path that would enable it to collide with the satellite and destroy the spacecraft and its components by force of impact.

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A senior defence official said that because the satellite is dormant and has been flying through the freezing temperatures of outer space, Navy commanders will rely on the sun to warm the craft so that the missile being shot at the spacecraft - which relies heavily on heat to find its target - can locate it. Such calculations make a daytime shoot down in the Pacific most likely.

The move - first attempt to shoot down a satellite since Cold War tests in the 1980s - has been condemned by Russia which says the exercise is a ruse by Washington to test a new US anti-missile defence system.
China has also expressed alarm over the plan, questioning why it is necessary to carry out such a risky maneouvre when the dangers posed by the satellite crash landing on Earth were so slim.

Last night the Pentagon warned ships and aircraft to avoid an area in the north Pacific west of Hawaii for 2½ hours beginning at 2:30 am tomorrow British time.

The 5,000lb spy satellite went off course shortly after its 2006 launch and has been orbiting out of the control of ground technicians. The craft is operated by the National Reconnaissance Organization, the U.S. agency in charge of spy satellites, which has not divulged the spacecraft's mission.

The Bush administration decided last week to try to shoot the satellite down using a ship-based weapon that is part of the U.S. missile defence system.

Administration officials said President Bush signed off on the plan to shoot the satellite down out of public safety concerns. The craft's fuel tank could survive re-entry and its hydrazine rocket fuel could disperse on impact, imperilling public safety, they said.

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