Nuclear weapons in space: Operation Starfish Prime, 1962. The U.S. exploded a nuclear weapon in orbit that led to a catastrophe for all the satellites then in low Earth orbit. What is to be done?
It is now more than 60 years later, and there may not be a solution, but there could be a way of determining what the risk is.
Dr. David M. Livingston , Dr. Space, is my colleague and co-host. We’re very pleased to be joined by Associate Professor Angela Di Fulvio, writing most recently in Nature magazine about an experiment by a researcher named Areg Danagoulian. It can’t stop a nuclear weapon in low Earth orbit from creating havoc with communications, intelligence, and warfighting, but it can determine where and how those nuclear weapons have been deployed in the event of a catastrophe.
The experiment in 1962 has led to questions about how to read whether there’s a nuclear weapon there. I understand there is a possibility of creating a satellite that is winningly called an ‘inspector’. In that inspector is the ability to read what is in the nuclear weapon that you can detect, quite different from all the other radiation around low Earth orbit.
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