As you know, breaking is not building. However, this piece of folk wisdom is not a universal truth. In any case, it is not at all easier to disable a spacecraft than to build it and launch it into orbit.
It was supposed to break, of course, enemy military satellites, but there is a need to destroy your own, which has lost control. In theory, there are many ways to disable the enemy's spacecraft (SC), and if there is an unlimited budget, many of them can be implemented.
During the Cold War, specialists on both sides of the Iron Curtain studied various means of destroying spacecraft, both by direct and "remote" impact. For example, they experimented with clouds of droplets of acid, ink, small metal filings, graphite, and studied the possibility of "dazzling" optical sensors with a ground laser. However, these methods are generally suitable for damaging optics. But all this ink and lasers will not interfere with the work of a radar or communications satellite. The exotic option of disabling enemy vehicles using an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) in a space nuclear explosion was not considered, since nuclear explosions in space were banned in 1963 by an international agreement. In addition, the pulse affects the electronics of only spacecraft in low orbits, where the strength of the earth's magnetic field is sufficient to generate a pulse of the required power. Already above the radiation belts (above 3000 kilometers above the Earth), the tidbits (navigation satellites, radio electronic devices, communications, etc.) actually come out of the blow.
If the budget is limited, the only acceptable way to destroy low-orbit vehicles is kinetic interception - a direct hit on the target satellite or its destruction by a cloud of destructive elements. However, even half a century ago, such a method could not be implemented, and the designers thought only about how best to arrange a duel of one satellite with another.
Orbital duel
At the dawn of manned flights in OKB-1 under the leadership of S. P. Korolev discussed the possibility of creating manned fighter ships, which were supposed to inspect enemy satellites and, if necessary, destroy them with missiles. At the same time, within the framework of the aerospace project "Spiral" in OKB-155 under the leadership of A. I. Mikoyan, a single-seat spacecraft interceptor of satellites was developed. Earlier, the same team considered the possibility of creating an automatic interceptor satellite. It ended with the fact that in 1978 the system of unmanned fighter satellites (IS), proposed by V. N. Chelomey. She stood on alert until 1993. The IS was launched into orbit by the Cyclone-2 carrier rocket, provided target interception already on the second or subsequent orbits, and struck the enemy spacecraft with a directed stream (explosion) of striking elements.
Destruction of enemy vehicles by a fighter satellite has its pros and cons. In fact, the organization of such an interception is akin to the classical task of meeting and docking, therefore its main advantage is not the highest requirements for the accuracy of the interceptor deployment and for the speed of on-board computers. There is no need to wait for an enemy satellite to approach "within a shot distance": a fighter can be launched at a convenient time (for example, from a cosmodrome), put into orbit, and then, at the right time, with the help of sequential issuing of corrective engine pulses, it can be accurately brought to the enemy. In theory, using an interceptor satellite, you can destroy enemy objects in arbitrarily high orbits.
But the system also has disadvantages. Interception is possible only if the orbital planes of the interceptor and the target coincide. It is possible, of course, to put the fighter into a certain transfer orbit, but in this case it will "creep" to the target for a rather long time - from several hours to several days. And in front of a likely (or already actual) adversary. No stealth and efficiency: either the target will have time to change its orbit, or the interceptor itself will turn into a target. During short-term conflicts, this method of hunting for satellites is not very effective. Finally, with the help of fighter satellites, it is possible to destroy at most a dozen enemy spacecraft in a short time. But what if the enemy's grouping consists of hundreds of satellites? The launch vehicle and the orbital interceptor are very expensive, and there will not be enough resources for many of these fighters.
We shoot from below
Another kinetic intercept, suborbital, grew out of anti-missile systems. The difficulties of such interception are obvious. “To shoot down a rocket with a rocket is like hitting a bullet in a bullet,” the “control systems academics” used to say. But the problem was posed and eventually successfully resolved. True, then, in the early 1960s, the task of a direct hit was not set: it was believed that an enemy warhead could be incinerated by a not very powerful close nuclear explosion or riddled with striking elements of a high-explosive fragmentation warhead, which was equipped with an anti-missile.
For example, the V-1000 interceptor missile from the Soviet "System" A "had a very complex high-explosive fragmentation warhead. Initially, it was believed that immediately before the meeting, the striking elements (tungsten cubes) should be sprayed into a cloud in the form of a flat pancake with a diameter of several tens of meters, "laying out" it perpendicular to the trajectory of the rocket. When the first real interception took place, it turned out that several submunitions actually pierce through the body of the enemy warhead, but it does not collapse, but continues to fly on! Therefore, it was necessary to modify this striking part - a cavity with explosives was arranged inside each element, which detonated when the striking element collided with the target and turned a relatively large cube (or ball) into a swarm of tiny fragments that smashed everything around at a fairly large distance. After that, the body of the warhead was already guaranteed to be destroyed by air pressure.
But the system does not work against satellites. There is no air in orbit, which means that a collision of a satellite with one or two striking elements is guaranteed to not solve the problem, a direct hit is necessary. And a direct hit became possible only when the computer moved from the surface of the Earth into the maneuvering warhead of an anti-satellite missile: before, the delay in the radio signal when transmitting guidance parameters made the task unsolvable. Now the anti-missile should not carry explosives in the warhead: destruction is achieved due to the satellite's own kinetic energy. A sort of orbital kung fu.
But there was one more problem: the oncoming speed of the target satellite and the interceptor was too high, and in order for a sufficient part of the energy to go to destroy the structure of the device, special measures had to be taken, because most modern satellites have a rather "loose" design and free layout. The target is simply pierced through with a projectile - no explosion, no destruction, not even fragments. Since the late 1950s, the United States has also been working on anti-satellite weapons. As early as October 1964, President Lyndon Johnson announced that a Thor ballistic missile system had been put on alert on Johnston Atoll. Alas, these interceptors were not particularly effective: according to unofficial information that got into the media, as a result of 16 test launches, only three missiles reached their target. Nevertheless, the Torahs were on duty until 1975.
Over the past years, technologies have not stood still: missiles, guidance systems and methods of combat use have been improved.
On February 21, 2008, when it was still early morning in Moscow, the operator of the Aegis anti-aircraft missile system (SAM) of the US Navy cruiser Lake Erie, located in the Pacific Ocean, pressed the "start" button, and the SM-3 rocket went up … Its target was the American reconnaissance satellite USA-193, which lost control and was about to crash to the ground in some place.
A few minutes later, the device, which was in an orbit with an altitude of more than 200 kilometers, was hit by a missile warhead. A kinotheodolite observing the flight of SM-3 showed how a fiery arrow pierces the satellite and it scatters into a cloud of fragments. Most of them, as promised by the organizers of the "rocket-satellite extravaganza", soon burned out in the atmosphere. However, some debris has moved to higher orbits. It seems that the detonation of the fuel tank with toxic hydrazine, the presence of which on board USA-193 and served as the formal reason for the spectacular interception, played a decisive role in the destruction of the satellite.
The United States notified the world in advance of its plans to destroy USA-193, which, by the way, compares favorably with China's unexpected missile interception of its old meteorological satellite on January 12, 2007. The Chinese confessed to their deed only on January 23, of course, accompanying their statement with assurances of the "peaceful nature of the experiment." The decommissioned FY-1C satellite was orbiting in a near-circular orbit with an altitude of approximately 850 kilometers. To intercept it, a modification of a solid-propellant ballistic missile was used, which was launched from the Sichan cosmodrome. This "muscle flexing" in itself has provoked backlash from the US, Japan and South Korea. However, the biggest nuisance for all space powers turned out to be the consequences of the destruction of the ill-fated meteorological satellite (however, the same happened during the destruction of the American apparatus). The incident generated nearly 2,600 large debris, approximately 150,000 average 1 to 10 centimeters in size and over 2 million small debris up to 1 centimeter in size. These fragments scattered in different orbits and now, orbiting the Earth at high speed, pose a serious danger to active satellites, which, as a rule, have no protection from space debris. It is for these reasons that kinetic interception and destruction of enemy satellites is acceptable only in wartime, and in any case, this weapon is double-edged.
The kinship of missile defense and anti-satellite systems of this type was clearly demonstrated: the main purpose of the Aegis is to fight high-altitude aircraft and ballistic missiles with a range of up to 4,000 kilometers. Now we see that this air defense system can intercept not only ballistic, but also global missiles like the Russian R-36orb. A global rocket is fundamentally different from a ballistic one - its warhead is put into orbit, makes 1-2 orbits and enters the atmosphere at a selected point using its own propulsion system. The advantage is not only in unlimited range, but also in all-azimuth - the warhead of a global missile can “fly in” from any direction, not just the shortest distance. Moreover, the cost of the intercepting anti-aircraft missile SM-3 hardly exceeds $ 10 million (launching an average reconnaissance satellite into orbit is much more expensive).
The shipborne makes the Aegis system extremely mobile. With the help of this relatively inexpensive and extremely effective system, it is possible to "flip" all LEOs of any "potential enemy" in a very short time, because even Russia's satellite constellations, not to mention other space powers, are extremely small compared to the stock of SM-3. But what about satellites in orbits higher than those available to Aegis?
The higher the safer
There is still no satisfactory solution. Already for interception at an altitude of 6,000 kilometers, the energy (and hence the launch mass, and the preparation time for launch) of an interceptor rocket becomes indistinguishable from the energy of a conventional space launch vehicle. But the most "interesting" targets, navigation satellites, revolve in orbits with an altitude of about 20,000 kilometers. Only remote means of influence are suitable here. The most obvious is a land-based, or better, air-based chemical laser. Approximately this is now being tested as part of a complex based on the Boeing-747. Its power is hardly sufficient to intercept ballistic missiles, but it is quite capable of disabling satellites in medium-altitude orbits. The fact is that in such an orbit the satellite moves much more slowly - it can be illuminated with a laser from the Earth for quite a long time and … overheat. Do not burn, but simply overheat, preventing the radiators from dissipating heat - the satellite will "burn" itself. And an airborne chemical laser is quite enough for this: although its beam is scattered along the road (at an altitude of 20,000 kilometers, the beam diameter will already be 50 meters), the energy density remains sufficient to be greater than that of the sun. This operation can be done covertly, where the satellite is not visible to ground control and monitoring structures. That is, it will fly out of the visibility zone alive, and when the owners see it again, it will be space debris that does not respond to signals.
Until the geostationary orbit, where most of the communication satellites operate, and this laser does not finish off - the distance is twice as large, the scattering is four times stronger, and the relay satellite is continuously visible to ground control points, so any actions taken against it will be immediately marked by the operator.
Nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers strike at such a distance, but have a much greater angular divergence, that is, they require much more energy, and the operation of such weapons will not go unnoticed, and this is already a transition to open hostilities. So satellites in geostationary orbit can be conventionally considered invulnerable. And in the case of close orbits, we can only talk about the interception and destruction of single spacecraft. Plans for an all-out space war like the Strategic Defense Initiative continue to remain unrealistic.
