The United States and Japan are co-sponsoring a resolution to be discussed by the United Nations Security Council that, if adopted, would reaffirm the 1967 International Space Obligations (OST), which prohibit the deployment and use of nuclear weapons in space.

The call, led by US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, followed alarming reports that Russia may be developing nuclear anti-satellite weapons. As an expert on space and nuclear weapons, I find these reports disturbing but not surprising, since nuclear anti-satellite weapons have been proposed since the Cold War in the 1960s.

So far little is known about this weapon. The White House said the facility was not operational and did not pose an immediate threat. Meanwhile, Russian President Putin said Moscow has no intention of seeking weapons that would force Russia to violate its OST commitments.

The 1967 agreement was ratified by 114 countries, including the United States and Russia. Article IV of the agreement banning the deployment of nuclear weapons in space. The article arose out of serious concerns about the impact of nuclear testing in space by the United States and Russia in the early 1960s. The most famous of these is Starfish Prime, a nuclear test conducted in low Earth orbit over the South Pacific Ocean in July 1962.

Nuclear explosions in space

I am a researcher at RAF Fylingdales, the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) station on the North Yorkshire moors. I produced the Fylingdales Archive, which chronicles the 60-year history of scanning space for signs of nuclear attack and monitoring an increasing number of satellites in low Earth orbit.

The performance of BMEWS’ electronic warfare subsystems was tested aboard Starfish Prime to understand its resilience to disruptions caused by nuclear explosions in space.

Unlike nuclear explosions on Earth, where the released energy superheats the atmosphere into a fireball, nuclear explosions in space release their energy in the form of high-energy charged particles, X-rays, intense neutron fluxes, and electromagnetic pulse (Emp). Emp occurs when gamma rays from a nuclear explosion strip electrons from gases in the upper atmosphere. It blinds radar, disables communications, and catastrophically overloads power grids.

Starfish Prime

Emp was first seen during the nuclear testing of Starfish Prime. The test weapon was launched on a Thor rocket from Johnston Island in the North Pacific Ocean on July 8, 1962. Just after 11pm Honolulu time, Starfish Prime exploded at an altitude of 250 miles over Johnston Island. The power of the thermonuclear explosion was 1.45 megatons. This is 1000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

The flash from the explosion was visible across the Pacific Ocean, filling the sky with bright auroras from Havia to New Zealand. Reports from Honolulu described the aurora as blood red and pink. However, the acceleration of the explosion was greater than expected. About 1,000 km away in Hawaii, the power grid went out, causing power outages that knocked out street lights, disrupted telephone networks and activated security alarms.

The impact on satellites in low Earth orbit was profound. High-energy particles from the explosion created radiation belts around the Earth. These were amplified by high-energy particles from a Russian nuclear weapons test conducted in space over Kazakhstan in October 1962, combined with radiation from Starfish Prime.

In the following months, radiation damaged and destroyed one-third of the satellites orbiting the Earth. This included AT&T’s Telstar satellite, which was launched two days after Starfish Prime on July 10, 1962. Telstar broadcast the first live transatlantic television footage on July 23, 1962, before succumbing to Starfish Prime radiation the following November.

The impact of nuclear weapons testing in space prompted the US and Soviet governments to agree to the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, adopted in August 1963, and to adopt the OST in 1967.

What will happen today?

At the time of the Starfish Prime nuclear test, there were only 22 active satellites in orbit. There are approximately 10,000 active satellites today, of which just over 8,000 are in low orbit. They support all aspects of life on Earth, including banking, healthcare, food supply, communications, navigation, climate monitoring, Earth science, and humanitarian aid.

The United States has more satellites in orbit than any other country; this includes 2,926 active payloads compared to Russia’s 167 satellites. These include Space X’s Starlink space internet services, which together with the US Department of Defense support the Ukrainian military in combat operations against Russia. force

As a result, the Starlink satellite array has been named as a potential target for a Russian nuclear attack in space; This attack will use the NEMP produced by a nuclear explosion to destroy the Starlink satellite array by frying its electronics. Like Telstar, residual radiation will eventually destroy the surviving spacecraft’s electronics and make their orbits unsafe for other satellites.

However, a nuclear attack on space infrastructure would also indiscriminately affect life on Earth. It will also have a disproportionate impact on vulnerable countries in the Global South that are most reliant on space systems to optimize resources such as food security and water management. It will also destroy the space systems of Russia’s ally China and render the Tiangong space station uninhabitable due to damage to its onboard life support systems.

It is also important to note that satellites of NATO member states are protected by Article 5 of the alliance charter, which obliges members to jointly respond to an attack on any other member state. An attack could cause Russia’s military and strategic infrastructure on Earth to retaliate with conventional weapons. But it also carries the risk of further escalation of nuclear tensions.

Therefore, the deployment of nuclear weapons into space is not a new concept. However, Starfish Prime has demonstrated that it has no military value and poses an indiscriminate danger to life on Earth by damaging satellite infrastructure.

Juliana Seuss, a space security expert at the Royal Joint Services Institute, emphasizes that such a weapon could be used “in cases where Russia has exhausted most other options and the loss of an ally is no longer a deterrent.”

Instead, they fuel the lurid political theater of nuclear threats and insinuations and serve by strengthening Russia’s flagging space power. Meanwhile, in the US, the stories are fueling nuclear alarm and eroding confidence in the Biden administration. It was therefore important for the UN to reaffirm its 50-year international commitment to OST and to reducing large-scale damage from nuclear weapons in space. Source