The Russian missile test raises fears in a cloud of debris circling

First came the unspecified spacecraft to New Zealand. Then came trash in Costa Rica and Texas.

By Wednesday, California’s LeoLabs, which uses radar to track objects in space to avoid collisions, detected 243 new debris orbiting the Earth – all from anti-satellite missile test that Russia launched two days earlier, a common criticism.

“They dropped a bomb in the middle of a new air competition,” said Daniel Ceperley, LeoLabs chief executive and co-founder, on how Russia’s tests affect the growing commercial sector, located at the bottom. around like new garbage.

“The high volume that most of these satellites are using is when the new waste was generated,” he added.

In the coming weeks, scientists, funders and policymakers will monitor the spread of a cloud of debris, forcing Russian and American workers into the International Space Station 400km above Earth to conceal on Monday.

It now threatens to affect hundreds of commercial satellites including from SpaceX and the US company imaging Planet, and re-examines the growing tensions between Russia and the US over the development of space weapons.

“Below it is the Kremlin he can they may have delayed this and decided not to do so, “said Samuel Charap, a Russian specialist at Rand Corporation, noting that Russia launched a long-running preliminary test amid the political crisis in Ukraine.

Russia is not the first country to undergo such a test. China, US and India in the past also introduced similarities, producing waste.

The Biden government, which strongly condemned the experiments, predicts that the number of “impossible” debris resulting from this will exceed 1,500, along with hundreds of thousands of tiny satellite fragments.

If that estimate is correct, then the number of trash litter that has been obtained as a result of testing by almost half of the weapons would increase, said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard and Smithsonian. Earlier this week, he added, there were already 3,158 pieces of debris tracked around as a result of previous weapons tests – out of 18,646 items tracked in space.

Although most of the test waste will decompose in five years, McDowell said, perhaps one-fifth of the volume could last for 10 years, and some 1,750kg satellite explosions by Russia could travel up to 2,000km and take about 15 years.

The US Space Command told the Financial Times its initial amount of 1,500 major items based on Department of Defense sensors and “expected growth”, adding that it would “take weeks, if not months, to thoroughly analyze all that was provided by several. anything “.

Ceperley said small business satellites now need to keep track of waste continuously and plan to change course to avoid collisions in the coming years, adding that the increased risk and cost are worthwhile.

“Some of the garbage was pushed far away from the satellite [that the Russian missile exploded] “Then maybe in some places we should go and see it,” he said.

Russian officials have abandoned the new waste, saying it was harmless and blaming the US for launching an air strike as the Pentagon prepares to unveil new programs.

Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, said the Russian military feels it needs to be able to deal with what it believes are US targets for nuclear weapons.

“If you are in the business of building anti-satellites, you could argue that, look, what if the US starts to put defensive weapons in the air? That’s why Russia needs this kind of anti-satellite power to control them,” Podvig said.

The US alone has already conducted two anti-satellite tests, in 1985 and 2008, and is developing new nuclear sensors in areas that Russia and China would consider dangerous.

Interestingly, Moscow also sees the US Air Force X-37B, a hidden “spacecraft” orbiting the Earth, as a major threat, “said Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a Moscow tank. .

He also said that a Russian weapons test this week was designed to look at the X-37B, so testing on site was necessary.

The US security chief described the X-37B as a “test” program.
is designed to reflect the most reliable, practical technology available,
the US Space Force’s inerospace testing platform, adding that it was
“Ensuring next-generation technologies to be used in space”.

Russia’s military policy of 2014 sees the air as a potential source of conflict. Some in the US military also criticized the development of weapons in the air. “The US ‘large number of’ darkness ” shows that the US is developing aerial weapons, and that the Americans already have anti-satanic systems,” Pukhov said.

Jeffrey Lewis, a specialist in weapons control at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, said the US actions shocked Russia. “The Russian people are trying to throw satellites exactly because the US is sending satellites to protect missiles,” he said.

The United States Secretary of Defense said: “The United States wants the region to be free of conflicts, but we will be as prepared to defend US interests in the air as we are in other areas.”

Planet, a client of LeoLabs who uses a 200-star galaxy to see the Earth about 500km above the Earth, said it was trying to understand the potential dangers of increasing pollution and called for the ban to be lifted, adding that Russia’s establishment has increased “anxiety and carelessness. “, citing previous China tests in 2007, US in 2008 and India in 2019.

McDowell said only one piece of paper was about to be tested in India in the 2019 anti-satellite test, which produced 131 objects that were tracked at the time but occurred at a very low level and rotted rapidly, and no two US tests were performed.

However, it took more than a decade for all the debris from the 1985 US test to decompose, and more than a year for all the debris from the second U.S. test in 2008. To date, 2,735 pieces are still available from the 2007 China China 2007 tests. .

However, according to Ankit Panda, an expert in weapons controls at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, despite criticizing the Russian missile, Washington has repeatedly refused to try to stop such tests. “It simply could not be better for Russia and China; it should not be good if our friends do the same, ”he said.