On January 12, 2007, the PRC managed to scare the whole world by testing a new ballistic missile, which was able to hit a satellite in Earth's orbit. A Chinese rocket destroyed the Fengyun-1 satellite. The United States, Australia and Canada then expressed their protest to China, and Japan demanded from its neighbor an explanation of the circumstances and the disclosure of the purpose of these tests. Such a sharp reaction from developed countries was caused by the fact that the satellite shot down by China was at the same height as many modern spy satellites.
The missile launched by the PRC with a kinetic warhead on board at an altitude of more than 864 kilometers successfully hit the outdated Chinese meteorological satellite Fengyun-1C. True, it is worth noting that, according to ITAR-TASS, the Chinese managed to shoot down the satellite only on the third attempt, and the two previous launches ended in failure. Thanks to the successful defeat of the satellite, China became the third country in the world (along with the United States and Russia), which is able to transfer hostilities into space.
There are quite objective reasons for dissatisfaction with such tests. First, the debris of a satellite destroyed in orbit could pose a threat to other spacecraft in orbit. Secondly, the Americans have a whole family of military satellites in this orbit, which are designed for reconnaissance and targeting precision weapons. China, however, has unequivocally shown that it has mastered the means that, if necessary, are capable of destroying the space grouping of a potential enemy.
Nuclear past
It is worth noting that various means of combating satellites began to be worked out from the very beginning of their appearance. And the first such tool was nuclear weapons. The United States was the first to join the anti-satellite race. In June 1959, the Americans tried to destroy their own Explorer-4 satellite, which by that time had exhausted its resource. For these purposes, the United States used a long-range ballistic missile Bold Orion.
In 1958, the US Air Force signed contracts for the development of experimental air-to-ground ballistic missiles. As part of the work on this project, the Bold Orion rocket was created, the flight range of which was 1770 km. The Bold Orion was not only the first long-range ballistic missile to be launched from an aircraft, but also the first to be used to intercept a satellite. True, the Americans failed to hit the Explorer-4 satellite. A rocket launched from a B-47 bomber missed the satellite by 6 km. Work within the framework of this project was carried out for another two years, but then it was finally curtailed.
However, the idea of combating satellites in the United States did not give up. The military has launched an unprecedented project called Starfish Prime. The apotheosis of this project was the most powerful nuclear explosion in space. On July 9, 1962, a Thor ballistic missile was launched, equipped with a 1.4 megaton warhead. It was detonated at an altitude of about 400 km above Johnson Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The flash that appeared in the sky was visible from a great distance. So she was able to capture on film from the island of Samoa, located at a distance of 3200 km from the epicenter of the explosion. On the island of Ohau in Hawaii, located 1,500 kilometers from the epicenter, several hundred street lamps, as well as televisions and radios, have failed. The fault was the strongest electromagnetic pulse.
It is the electromagnetic pulse and the increase in the concentration of charged particles in the Earth's radiation belt that caused the failure of 7 satellites, both American and Soviet. The experiment was "overfulfilled", the explosion itself and its consequences disabled a third of the entire orbital constellation of satellites in orbit at that moment. Among others, the first ever commercial telecommunications satellite, Telestar 1, was put out of action. The formation of a radiation belt in the Earth's atmosphere caused the USSR to make adjustments to the Vostok manned spacecraft program for two years.
However, such a radical means as nuclear weapons did not justify itself. The very first serious explosion in orbit demonstrated that an indiscriminate weapon is. The military realized that such a tool could do considerable harm to the United States itself. It was decided to abandon nuclear weapons as a means of combating satellites, but work in the direction of anti-satellite weapons was only gaining momentum.
Soviet development of anti-satellite weapons
The USSR approached the issue much more "delicately". The first Soviet project, which led to the experimental development of the idea, was the launch of single-stage missiles from an aircraft. The rockets were launched from a height of 20,000 meters and carried charges - 50 kg in TNT equivalent. At the same time, guaranteed target destruction was ensured only with a deviation of no more than 30 meters. But to achieve such accuracy in those years in the USSR simply could not, therefore, in 1963, work in this direction was curtailed. Missile tests for specific space targets were not carried out.
Other proposals in the field of anti-satellite weapons were not long in coming. At the time of the transition of manned flights from the Vostok spacecraft to the Soyuz spacecraft, SP Korolev began developing a space interceptor, designated Soyuz-P. Curiously, the installation of weapons on this orbital interceptor was not planned. The main task of the crew of this manned spacecraft was to inspect space objects, primarily American satellites. To do this, the Soyuz-P crew would have to go out into open space and disable the enemy satellite mechanically, or place it in a special container to be sent to Earth. However, this project was quickly abandoned. It turned out to be expensive and extremely difficult, as well as dangerous, primarily for astronauts.
The installation of eight small rockets on the Soyuz, which the cosmonauts would launch from a safe distance of 1 km, was also considered as a possible option. An automatic intercept station equipped with the same missiles was also developed in the USSR. Soviet engineering thought in the 1960s was literally in full swing, trying to find a guaranteed way to deal with the satellites of a potential enemy. However, designers were often faced with the fact that the Soviet economy was simply not able to pull some of their projects. For example, the deployment in orbit of an entire "army" of fighter satellites that would rotate in their orbits indefinitely, activating only at the start of large-scale hostilities.
As a result, the USSR decided to stop at the cheapest, but quite effective option, which involved launching a fighter satellite into space, aimed at the object to be destroyed. It was planned to destroy the satellite by detonating the interceptor and hitting it with a fragmentation mass. The program was named "Satellite Destroyer", and the interceptor satellite itself received the designation "Flight". Work on its creation was carried out in OKB-51 V. N. Chelomey.
The satellite fighter was a spherical apparatus weighing about 1.5 tons. It consisted of a compartment with 300 kg of explosives and an engine compartment. At the same time, the engine compartment was equipped with a reusable orbital engine. The total running time of this engine was approximately 300 seconds. During this period of time, the interceptor had to approach the destroyed object at a distance of guaranteed defeat. The casing of the Polet fighter-satellites was made in such a way that, at the moment of detonation, it disintegrated into a huge number of fragments, scattering at great speed.
The very first attempt to intercept a space object with the participation of "Flight" ended in success. On November 1, 1968, the Soviet interceptor satellite "Kosmos-249" destroyed the satellite "Kosmos-248", which had been launched into Earth's orbit the day before. After that, more than 20 more tests were carried out, most of which ended successfully. At the same time, starting from 1976, in order not to multiply the amount of space debris in orbit, the tests ended not with detonation, but with the contact of a fighter and a target and their subsequent vault from orbit using onboard engines. The created system was quite simple, trouble-free, practical and, importantly, cheap. In the mid-1970s, it was put into service.
Another version of the anti-satellite system began to be developed in the USSR at the turn of the 1980s. In 1978, the Vympel Design Bureau began work on the creation of an anti-satellite missile, which was to receive a fragmentation warhead. The missile was planned to be used from the MiG-31 fighter-interceptor. An anti-satellite missile was launched to a predetermined height using an aircraft, after which it was detonated near an enemy satellite. In 1986, the MiG Design Bureau began work on fine-tuning two fighter-interceptors for equipping with new weapons. The new version of the aircraft received the designation MiG-31D. This interceptor was supposed to carry one specialized anti-satellite missile, and its weapons control system was completely reconfigured to use it.
In addition to a special modification of the MiG-31D fighter-interceptor, the anti-satellite complex developed by the Almaz Design Bureau included the 45Zh6 Krona ground-based radar and optical detection system located at the Kazakh Sary-Shagan training ground, as well as the 79M6 Contact anti-satellite missile. The MiG-31D aircraft was supposed to carry only one 10-meter missile, which, by detonating a warhead, could hit satellites at an altitude of 120 km. The coordinates of the satellites was to be transmitted by the ground detection station "Krona". The collapse of the Soviet Union prevented the continuation of work in this direction; in the 1990s, work on the project was stopped.
A new round
Currently, the United States has at least two systems that, with some conventions, can be classified as anti-satellite. This is, in particular, the Aegis sea-based system, equipped with SM-3 missiles. It is an anti-aircraft guided missile with a kinetic warhead. Its main purpose is to combat ICBMs that move along a suborbital flight path. The SM-3 missile is physically unable to hit targets located at an altitude of more than 250 km. On February 21, 2008, an SM-3 rocket launched from cruiser Lake Erie successfully hit an American reconnaissance satellite that lost control. Thus, space debris has been added to Earth's orbit.
Roughly the same can be said about the US ground-based missile defense system under the designation GBMD, which is also equipped with missiles with kinetic warheads. Both of these systems are primarily used as missile defense systems, but they also have a stripped-down anti-satellite function. The naval system was put into service in the late 1980s, the land-based system in 2005. There are also not unfounded assumptions that Washington is working on the creation of new generations of anti-satellite weapons, which can be based on physical effects - electromagnetic and laser.
This also follows from the American strategy of launching a new round of the arms race. At the same time, it all did not begin now, when relations between Russia and the United States turned out to be rather severely spoiled. This round was laid back in the last decade, when US President Barack Obama announced a return to the program of space exploration for military purposes. At the same time, the United States refused to sign the UN resolution on "peaceful outer space" proposed by the Russian Federation.
Against this background, work should also be carried out in Russia in the field of creating modern anti-satellite systems, while it does not necessarily have to be about laser weapons. So, back in 2009, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force, Alexander Zelenin, told reporters about the resuscitation of the Krona program for the same tasks for which it was developed in the USSR. Also in Russia, it is possible that tests are being carried out with interceptor satellites. At least in December 2014, an unidentified object in orbit was discovered in the United States, which was initially mistaken for debris. Later it was found that the object moved along a given vector and approached the satellites. Some experts suggested that we are talking about testing a miniature satellite with a new type of engine, but Western media dubbed the discovered "baby" a satellite killer.
