All contemporaries have long known that horrendous arms race organized by the Americans and the Soviet Union after the end of World War II. And the main object in this action was space, which is used far from being for good and peaceful purposes.
Thus, by the end of the fifties of the last century, all the world's media trumpeted not only about the launch of satellites, but about nuclear explosions in outer space closest to the Earth. Of course, the Union was also aware of such experiments, but no one in the world knew about Soviet tests. The "Iron Curtain" closed access to classified information about the USSR's nuclear experiments. However, it has not been disclosed to this day, and all available stories about Soviet military space operations are unofficial information.
Of course, both the USSR and the USA were collecting data on how a nuclear explosion affects and the radiation "hatching" from it, like a chicken fromeggs, on the working condition of satellite equipment, rockets and systems that connect the Earth with "space". This orgy ended only in 1963, thanks to the signing of an agreement between three countries, including Great Britain. This document banned all further testing of nuclear weapons both in space and in the earth's atmosphere, as well as under water.
American experiments
A nuclear explosion in space, arranged by the Americans, by the way, more than once or twice, on the one hand, was of a scientific nature, on the other - everything destroying. After all, no one knew how the radiation background would behave after the explosion. Scientists could only speculate, but no one expected such a shocking material that they eventually received. Below we will talk about the impact of a nuclear explosion in space on ordinary earthly life and their inhabitants.
The first and most famous was the operation called "Argus", carried out one day in September in 1958. Moreover, the area for preparing the explosion of a nuclear bomb in space was chosen very carefully.
Details of Operation Argus
So, in the early autumn of 1958, the South Atlantic turned into a real testing ground. The operation consisted of testing a nuclear explosion in space within the Van Allen radiation belts. The designated goal was to find out all the consequences for communications, as well as the electronic filling of satellite "bodies" and ballistic missiles.
The secondary goal was no less interesting: scientists had to confirm or disprove the fact of formationartificial radiation belt within our planet through a nuclear explosion in space. Therefore, the Americans chose a very predictable place in which there is a special anomaly: it is in the south of the Atlantic region that the radiation belts come closest to the earth's surface.
For such a global operation, the American leadership created a special unit from the second fleet of the country, calling it the number 88. It consisted of nine ships with more than four thousand employees. Such an amount was necessary because of the scale of the project itself, because after a nuclear explosion in space, the Americans had to collect the data received. For these purposes, the ships carried special rockets designed for geodetic launches.
In the same period, the Explorer-4 satellite was launched into outer space. Its task was to isolate data on the background radiation in the Van Allen belt from the general space information. There was also his brother - Explorer-5, whose launch failed.
How did the test of a nuclear bomb explode in space? The first launch was carried out on 27 August. The rocket was delivered to an altitude of 161 km. The second - on August 30, then the rocket rose to 292 km, but the third, carried out on September 6, went down in history as the highest and largest nuclear explosion in space. The September launch was marked by a height of 467 km.
The power of the explosion was determined to be one 1.7 kilotons, and one warhead had a weight of almost 99 kg. Forto find out what would happen from a nuclear explosion in space, the Americans sent warheads using the Kh-17A ballistic missile, previously modified. It had a length of 13 m and a diameter of 2 m.
As a result, after collecting all the research data, the Argus operation proved that due to the electromagnetic pulse received as a result of the explosion, the equipment and communications can not only be damaged, but also completely fail. True, in addition to this information, sensational news was revealed confirming the emergence of artificial radiation belts on our planet. An American newspaper, using a photo of a nuclear explosion from space, described Argus as the largest-scale scientific experiment in the history of modern mankind.
And the very unit 88, which fell into the immediate thick of things, was disbanded and, according to reliable sources, there were more people who died of cancer among them than in the groups involved in monitoring and recording data.
Soviet covert operations
The Soviet Union was also interested in the damaging factors from a nuclear explosion in space, therefore, according to unconfirmed reports, a whole series of experiments was carried out, code-named "Operation K". The tests were carried out after the American ones. Experiments to determine whether a nuclear explosion is possible in space were carried out by Soviet scientists at a missile test site located in the settlement of Kapustin Yar.
There were five tests in total. The first two in 1961, in the autumn, and a year later, almost at the same time, the remaining three. All of them were marked with the letter "K" with the serial number of the launch. In order to understand what a nuclear explosion looks like from space, two ballistic missiles were launched. One was equipped with a charge, and the other had special sensors that monitored the process.
During the first two operations, the charges reached 300 and 150 km, respectively, and the other three had similar data, except for "K-5" - it exploded at an altitude of 80 km. According to the tester Boris Chertok, who wrote the book "Rockets and People", the flash from the explosion shone for only a small fraction of a second, it looked like a second sun. The USSR found out the same information as the Americans - all radio devices worked with noticeable violations, and radio communication was generally interrupted for some time within the radius of the nearest area.
Explosions in space
But in addition to the above tests, in the interval between the American and Soviet operations, the United States managed to do two more nuclear explosions in space, the consequences of which were much more tragic.
One of the launches, made in 1962, was called "Fishball", but among the military was known as "Starfish". The explosion was supposed to occur at a height of 400 kilometers, and its power was to be equal to 1.4 megatons. However, this operation was unsuccessful. On June 20, 1962, a ballistic missile with a technical malfunction, which was obviously not known, set off from a missile range located on the Pacific Johnston Atoll. Thus,59 seconds after launch, her engine simply shut down.
Then, to prevent a global catastrophe, the security officer ordered the missile to self-destruct. The missile was detonated at an altitude of only 11 km, this altitude is cruising for many civil aircraft. In the end, fortunately for the Americans, the explosive destroyed the rocket, which made it possible to secure the islands from a nuclear explosion. True, some of the debris that fell on the nearby Sand Atoll was able to infect the area with radiation.
On July 9, the experiment was decided to be repeated. But this time the launch was successful and, judging by the photographs taken of a nuclear explosion in space, the red glow was visible even from New Zealand, located 7,000 km from Johnson. This test was quickly made public, unlike the first experimental experiments.
USSR and US spacecraft watched a successful launch. The Union, thanks to the Cosmos-5 satellite, was able to record an increase in gamma radiation by a decent number of orders. But the satellite floated in outer space 1,200 m below the explosion. After that, the appearance of a powerful radiation belt was noted, and the three satellites that passed through its "body" were practically out of order due to damage to the solar panels. Therefore, in 1962, the USSR checked the coordinates of the location of this belt when launching the Vostok-3 and Vostok-4 missiles. Nuclear contamination of the magnetosphere was observed over the next few years.
Nextthe American launch was made on October 20 of the same year. Its code name was "Chickmate". The warhead exploded at an altitude of 147 km, and the test site was outer space itself.
How does a nuclear explosion happen in space?
We got acquainted with all the tests, since no other country in the world supported similar Soviet-American experiments. Now let's look at what a nuclear explosion looks like from space, according to a scientific explanation. What sequence of events occurs after the delivery of a nuclear warhead into outer space?
Gamma quanta are ejected from it at high speed for the first tens of nanoseconds. At an altitude of 30 km in the earth's atmosphere, gamma rays collide with neutral molecules, subsequently forming high-energy electrons. Developing tremendous speed, already charged particles give rise to powerful electromagnetic radiation, which disables absolutely any sensitive electronic devices located in the radiation zone on earth.
The next couple of seconds, the ejected energy from the warhead will work as X-ray radiation. True, such an x-ray consists of very powerful waves and electromagnetic flows. It is they who create voltage inside the satellite, because of which all its electronic filling simply burns out.
What happens to weapons in space after they explode?
But the explosion does not end there, its final part looks like scattered ionized remainsfrom the warhead. They travel hundreds of kilometers until they interact with the earth's magnetic field. After such contact, a low-frequency electric field is created, the waves of which gradually propagate around the entire planet and are reflected from the lower edges of the ionosphere, as well as from the earth's surface.
But even low frequencies can have devastating consequences for electrical circuits and lines located under water far from the explosion site. Over the next months, the electrons that have fallen into the magnetic field gradually disable all the electronics and avionics of earth satellites.
US Anti-Missile System
With the availability of a space photo of a nuclear explosion and all the accompanying information on studying launches, America began to form an anti-missile defense complex. However, it is quite difficult and, rather, impossible to create something opposing long-range missiles. That is, if you use a missile defense missile against a flying missile with a nuclear warhead, you will get a real high- altitude nuclear explosion.
At the beginning of the 21st century, experts from the Pentagon conducted an assessment work related to the consequences of nuclear space tests. According to their report, even a small nuclear charge, for example, equal to 20 kilotons (the bomb in Hiroshima had just such a figure) and detonated at an altitude of up to 300 km, in just a couple of weeks, will disable absolutely all satellite systems that are not protectedfrom background radiation. Thus, for about a month, countries that have satellite "bodies" in low orbit will be left without their help.
Consequences
According to the same Pentagon report, due to a high- altitude nuclear explosion, many points of near-Earth space absorb radiation increased by several orders of magnitude, and maintain this level over the next two to three years. Despite the initial anti-radiation protection assumed in the design of the satellite system, the accumulation of radiation is happening much faster than expected.
In this case, orientation instruments and communication will initially stop working. It follows that the lifetime of the satellite will be reduced significantly. Plus, the increased radiation background will make it impossible to send a brigade to carry out repair work. The standby mode will be from a year or more until the radiation level decreases. Re-launching a nuclear warhead into space would cost $100 billion to replace all of the vehicles, and that's without taking into account the damage done to the economy.
What kind of protection can be from radiation?
For many years, the Pentagon has been trying to develop the right program to create protection for its satellite devices. Most military satellites have been transferred to higher orbits, which are considered the safest in terms of the radiation released during a nuclear explosion. Some satellites have been equipped with special shields that can protect electronic devices from radiation waves. In general, this is something like Faraday cages:original metal shells that do not have access from the outside, and also do not allow the external electromagnetic field to get inside. The shell is made of aluminum up to one centimeter thick.
But the head of the project, which is being developed in the US Air Force laboratories, Greg Jeanet, argues that if US spacecraft are not completely protected from radiation now, then in the future it will be possible to eliminate it much faster than nature itself can handle it. A group of scientists are analyzing the step-by-step possibility of blowing out the background radiation from low orbits by artificially creating low-frequency radio waves.
What is HAARP
If we consider the above point in theoretical terms, then there is the possibility of creating entire fleets of special satellites, whose work would be to produce these very low-frequency radio waves near the radiation belts. The project is called HAARP or High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. Work is underway in Alaska in the Gakona settlement.
Here they are doing research on active places that appear in the ionosphere. Scientists are trying to achieve results in managing their properties. In addition to outer space, this project is also aimed at researching the latest technologies for communication with submarines, as well as other machines and objects located underground.
