Starfish Prime - how the Americans blew up space
The glow from the Starfish Prime explosion lasted for several minutes and was observed from several thousand kilometers away.
Hundred Hiroshima in orbit
In the summer of 1962, the Soviet Izvestia published the headline "The Crime of the American Atomic Workers: The United States Performs a Nuclear Explosion in Space." There really was something to blame for - the United States organized a whole thermonuclear test program weapons in orbit. It didn't start out very smoothly.
On June 20, 1962, the Thor rocket crashed at an altitude of 10 km above the Pacific Ocean. As it turned out, a frightened control officer initiated the self-destruction of a perfectly serviceable product.
As a result, radioactive materials spilled thickly on several atolls of the Hawaiian archipelago. And this was only one of the episodes of the American atomic attack on near space. One of the opinion leaders of those times, Soviet film director Sergei Yutkevich, commented to Izvestia on nuclear events in Earth orbit:
“We know who we are dealing with, but until the last moment we hoped that the conscience, if not wisdom, of American nuclear scientists would hear the angry voices of millions and millions of ordinary people of the earth, the voices of mothers and scientists of their country.”
To be fair, the Soviet Union also tried its thermonuclear powers in outer space, and even worked out scenarios for launching warheads to the moon. We stopped on time, primarily because of the fear of an emergency fall of the launch vehicle on the territory of neighboring countries.
The main purpose of testing weapons of mass destruction in low Earth orbits was the primitive satisfaction of curiosity - "what will happen if." Ground, underground, underwater and air nuclear tests by the beginning of the 60s were frankly bored by everyone. What happens if you shoot a rocket with a 1,45-megaton warhead into the sky and blow it up at an altitude of 400 km?
The world at that time was simply vibrating before a seemingly imminent nuclear catastrophe, and any means of deterrence were considered. 1962 was no exception, in the summer of which the Americans detonated the largest atomic bomb in space, and in the autumn they almost unleashed a third world war with the Soviet Union.
Starfish Prime over the South Atlantic
The experiment with the explosion of a thermonuclear weapon was planned as part of the Starfish Prime project, and, surprisingly, the Americans even managed to pull up a completely peaceful scientific basis for it.
Probably to temper the ardor of overly zealous fighters for the environment. For example, radioactive isotopes of cadmium-109 were added to the special ammunition - in the future, this made it possible to more accurately determine the rate of mixing of tropical and polar air masses. Due to cadmium, the Americans have learned to record the fact of nuclear weapons tests anywhere in the world.
To do this, it was enough to take air samples in the stratosphere and correlate them with the prevailing air currents. In general, the tests were approached very carefully. The Americans sent 27 rockets equipped with observation devices into space in parallel with the warhead. The US Navy vessels were on duty at sea, and several warning flashes were provided for the birds before the explosion. As planned, this was supposed to save the birds from blinding.
But there were also more global ideas. We are talking about the newly discovered Van Allen belt or the Earth's radiation belt.
American James Van Allen, working with data from the Explorer satellite, recorded a radiation anomaly at altitudes from 500 to 1 km. This almost put an end to manned astronautics - scientists considered the passage of spacecraft with people through the belt to be deadly. In fact, everything is not so critical.
A person, passing the Van Allen belt, receives no more than 12 microsieverts per hour, which, of course, is 6–10 times more than in a flying plane, but much lower than the permissible norms. But at the time the belt was discovered in 1958, no one really knew the intensity of radiation there, and the military decided to detonate a nuclear charge in the immediate vicinity of it. See what happens.
Van Allen in this dubious stories participated very actively, sincerely believing in the destruction of the belt and the salvation of manned astronautics. In 1960, Belka and Strelka flew into space, returned alive, but this did not bother the Americans - they did not believe in the honesty of Soviet experimenters and assumed that the dogs died from radiation sickness, and then they simply replaced a couple.
Starfish Prime over the South Atlantic
The story of the Van Allen belt and the Starfish Prime project somewhat masked the main purpose of the test - to evaluate the lethal effect of a nuclear charge on spacecraft. The possibility of destroying Soviet ballistic missiles flying up to the American continent was considered.
"Rainbow Bomb" over the South Atlantic
"A bright white flash pierced through the clouds, quickly turning into an expanding green ball of radiation, receding into a clear sky above a cloudy sky,"
- this is how an eyewitness described the events of the night of July 9, 1962.
The Starfish Prime project exploded with a power of one hundred Hiroshima at an altitude of 400 kilometers above Johnston Island in the south Atlantic. These were not only the most powerful in-orbit tests of thermonuclear weapons in history, but also the highest ones.
The International Space Station is now at about the same altitude. The Thor launch vehicle, which had failed to launch a few days earlier, successfully launched the W9 nuclear device into close orbit on July 49.
The Hawaiian Islands suffered the most - within a radius of 1 kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion, street lighting went out, all possible alarms went off, radio and telephone communications were turned off. Only by a happy coincidence, not a single aircraft that ended up over the South Atlantic crashed into the water from a power surge on board. The Americans did not expect such a powerful electromagnetic pulse.
According to calculations, all effects from an atomic orbital explosion should not have been reflected on the earth's surface. Fireworks and a light show in the sky - the maximum that the testers counted on. Actually, Starfish Prime was launched at night for this purpose. In this part, everything turned out one hundred percent. Eyewitnesses of the event described the consequences of the explosion colorfully:
“For three minutes after the explosion, the moon was in the center of the sky, part blood red, part pink. Clouds appeared as dark silhouettes against the illuminated sky.
The nuclear glow was observed 4 thousand kilometers from the epicenter in New Zealand.
Local saw
"a celestial glow that does not pulsate or flicker, taking the form of a giant V and changing hue from yellow to dull red, then to icy blue, and finally to white."
But that's not all.
The most powerful thermonuclear explosion in history in near-Earth orbit not only did not reduce the radioactivity of the Earth's belt, but created several new ones. One of these, much more dangerous than the Van Allen belt, lasted almost a decade in orbit.
There were also more prosaic consequences.
Despite the fact that the authors of Starfish Prime tried not to hit the satellites, several spacecraft still fell under the distribution. Prudently launched only the next day after the tests, the Telstar communications satellite fell into the most powerful electromagnetic fields and gradually degraded. The Americans make excuses that they finally finished off the Soviet tests of orbital thermonuclear weapons in October 1962.
The British Ariel-1, on the contrary, was sent into space before the Starfish Prime test, but it also suffered damage from radiation. The device did not die, but partially performed its functions until 1976.
A couple of Starfish Prime victims - above Telstar, below - British Ariel-1
Subsequently, the Americans at least ten times reduced the power of special products that were launched and exploded in space until November 1962. And in 1963, the US and the USSR signed the Treaty on the Limitation of Nuclear Tests, including in Space.
The first nuclear explosions above the atmosphere were staged by the Americans in 1958, and only five years were enough to make sure of the enormous destructive power. But the limitations of the test do not mean that there are no special munitions in the arsenals of world powers that can repeat the success of the Starfish Prime project.
At present, the effectiveness of such strikes will be several times higher than the results of 1962. First of all, because of the extreme saturation of the orbit with spacecraft of various classes and purposes.
A thermonuclear explosion of 1,5–2 megatons can disable up to 90 percent of the world's satellite constellation. This is not to mention the chaos that will reign over a single territory of the planet.
The modern world is vulnerable to a massive disconnection of communications, electronic devices and lack of electricity. Microchips now rule the world. This is especially the case for armies that overly rely on satellite communications and navigation.
The US looks with dismay at North Korea, which has nuclear weapons and launch vehicles but no satellites. That is, in the extreme case, Kim Jong-un can thoroughly slow down world progress with one or two nuclear warheads in space, without losing anything. And practically without victims and radioactive contamination of the planet. And the probability of this is not zero at all.
But there is also the other side of the coin.
Now the explosion of a nuclear bomb in space is a declaration of war. On the surface of the Earth, after the explosion, early warning radar stations become helpless. Dozens of satellites busy tracking missile launches will be instantly blinded, forcing the opponent to launch a preemptive strike. There is no other way - the risk of getting atomic Armageddon first in line does not please anyone.
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