A missile launched from a Navy ship successfully struck a dying U.S. spy satellite passing 130 miles over the Pacific this afternoon, a defense official said. Full details were not immediately available.

According to a Defense Department news release, at about 5:26 p.m. HST, the USS Lake Erie fired a single modified tactical Standard Missile-3, hitting the satellite about 133 nautical miles over the Pacific Ocean as it traveled in space at more than 17,000 mph.

The San Diego-based USS Decatur and USS Russell, a destroyer based in Pearl Harbor, were part of the task force, the release said, but the Russell remained in port today.

The Pentagon said the objective was to rupture the satellite's fuel tank to dissipate the approximately 1,000 pounds of hydrazine, a hazardous fuel that could pose a danger to people on earth, before it entered into earth's atmosphere.

Confirmation that the fuel tank has been fragmented should be available within 24 hours, the news release said.

Shortly before the missile was launched, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with service members at the officers club at Hickam Air Force Base on his way to Australia.

He also addressed the planned shoot-down.

"There's been a tremendous amount of focus on this, a lot of work over the last many months to learn everything we can to optimize the possibility that we will in fact get a hit," Mullen said late this afternoon.

Due to the relatively low altitude of the satellite at the time of the engagement, debris will begin to re-enter the earth's atmosphere immediately.

Nearly all of the debris will burn up on reentry within 24-48 hours and the remaining debris should re-enter within 40 days, it said.

The Pentagon will conduct a news briefing at 2 a.m. Hawai'i time to provide further information related to the operation.

The briefing can be viewed live on www.Defenselink.com through the Pentagon Channel.

The goal in this first-of-its-kind mission for the Navy was not just to hit the satellite but to obliterate a tank aboard the spacecraft carrying 1,000 pounds of a toxic fuel called hydrazine.

U.S. officials have said the fuel would pose a potential health hazard to humans if it landed in a populated area. Although the odds of that were small even if the Pentagon had chosen not to try to shoot down the satellite, it was determined that it was worth trying to eliminate even that small chance.

Officials said it might take a day or longer to know for sure if the toxic fuel was blown up.

The U.S. had criticized China last year when China shot down one of its aging weather satellites in a test, leaving a debris field in a higher Earth orbit.

Mullen said the U.S. has been open about its intentions with the failing satellite.

"Clearly, we're taking the shot at what we hope will be an altitude that minimizes the amount of space debris that will occur," he said.

He added that the U.S. has "engaged government's throughout the world to tell them what our intentions are."

"This is a system that is not designed for this kind of (satellite shoot-down) capability," he said. "We actually had to modify the system in order to take this shot."