"We swore that we would not see in space a space full of weapons of mass destruction, but would fill it with tools of knowledge and understanding," declared US President John F. Kennedy in his legendary "moon speech" at Rice University in Texas just over 61 years ago. But now it seems that space is becoming, against our will and against our wrath, the forefront of a new war between superpowers. Today marks two years since the incident that marked the beginning of this war, with the help of Forefront and Perplexity.
On November 15, 2021, Russia tested a new rocket against satellites and other objects in space. The missile hit its target – an old Russian satellite called Cosmos 1408, which had not been used for several years – and blew it up. This strike caused great concern around the world – not only because it signaled that Russia was capable of destroying anything it perceived as a threat, even outside the atmosphere – but also because the success of the test almost caused disaster.
The satellite's explosion created a space debris cloud of more than 1,500 trackable pieces, and probably even more than smaller particles, all of which now orbit Earth. This fact endangered – and still endangers – other satellites, as well as the International Space Station. In fact, NASA had to move the station to avoid colliding with the debris of the new spacecraft not once, but twice within a week. On the day of the test, NASA reported that the debris had reached a distance of about 2 kilometers from the station. The astronauts, who had arrived at the station a few days earlier on a SpaceX rocket, were forced to lock themselves in the tiny, relatively protected spacecraft until the fury passed.
As mentioned, the cloud of debris created by the Russian experiment continues to orbit the Earth, posing a long-term danger to all activity in low Earth orbit. According to analysts, it could take decades for waste particles to drop to the level at which they burn from atmospheric friction.
This concern led to widespread condemnation of the Russian test by the United States, NATO, the European Union and the United Nations, who accepted the reckless and dangerous nature of the act, ignoring international laws and alliances and its potentially devastating consequences. The Russian Defense Ministry, for its part, approved the test, but denied any risk to the space station or other satellites, claiming that the resulting debris did not and will not pose a threat to space stations, satellites, etc.
It should be noted that some of the astronauts present at the station at the time of the experiment were Russians. However, the timing of the test, after a series of mysterious events that caused the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to move the station from orbit, raises concerns that Russia deliberately tried to cause a space disaster as a kind of threat against Americans and Europeans for their involvement in the war in Ukraine. It's also worth noting that the Russians have a long and unflattering history of carelessly crashing old satellites and space stations on Earth in a way that separates habitable places — and last year it even used that history to threaten to deliberately crash the space station in central Europe. Such a crash could create a major disaster.
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