Image: Shutterstock
What’s New: An interactive report and depiction by the Washington Post.
Why It’s Important: Such an explosion could destroy lots of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and quite possibly:
- Create enough debris to destroy satellites in LEO and make it unusable (the Kessler Syndrome). Note, the U.S. is far more dependent on space for any number of essential services, including PNT, than are Russia or China.
- Create enough debris to make it impossible to transit LEO safely, thereby denying use of MEO and GEO where other satellites live and trapping us on Earth.
- Create enough atmospheric disturbance to prevent GPS and other GNSS signals from reaching Earth for some period of time.
- Directly destroy and disrupt systems on the ground beneath the explosion.
What Else to Know:
- One of our partner organizations, the National Security Space Association, recently released a paper on this. “Russia’s Space-Based, Nuclear-Armed Anti-Satellite Weapon: Implications and Response Options“
- The U.S. and Russia exploded numerous atomic weapons in space in the 1960s. These temporarily knocked out some satellites, telephone systems, power grids, underground cables, and radio systems. We depend on a lot more electronic systems now than we did in the 60’s.
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See the report for a really cool image of the Starfish Prime explosion in 1962.
