WASHINGTON (AP) — What would it mean if Russia used nuclear warheads to destroy U.S. satellites? Your home’s electrical and water systems could fail. Aviation, rail and car traffic could come to a halt. Your cellphone could stop working.
These are among the reasons why there was alarm this week over reports that Russia may be pursuing nuclear weapons in space.
The White House has said the danger isn’t imminent. But reports of the new anti-satellite weapon build on longstanding worries about space threats from Russia and China. So much of the country’s infrastructure is now dependent on U.S. satellite communications — and those satellites have become increasingly vulnerable.
It would also not be the first time a nuclear warhead has been detonated in space, or the only capability China and Russia are pursuing to disable or destroy a U.S. satellite.
Here’s a look at what’s happened in the past, why Russia may be pursuing a nuclear weapon for space now, and what the U.S. is doing about all the space threats it faces.
THE PAST: STARFISH PRIME AND PROJECT K
Both Russia and the U.S. have detonated nuclear warheads in space. In the 1960s, little was known about how the relatively new weapons of mass destruction would act in the Earth’s atmosphere. Both countries experimented to find out. The Soviet tests were called Project K and took place from 1961 to 1962. The U.S. conducted 11 tests of its own, and the largest, and first successful, test was known as Starfish Prime, said Stephen Schwartz, a non-resident senior fellow at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
Starfish Prime launched in July 1962, when the U.S. sent up a 1.4-megaton thermonuclear warhead on a Thor missile and detonated it about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth.
The missile was launched about 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) from Hawaii but the effects from the tests were seen around the equator.
“The large amount of enerqy released at such a high altitude by the detonation caused widespread auroras throughout the Pacific,” according to a 1982 Department of Defense report on the tests.
The blast disabled several satellites, including a British one named Ariel, as radioactive particles from the burst came in contact with them. Radio systems and the electrical grid on Hawaii were temporarily knocked out, said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists….