As such, the United States, China, and Russia have a shared interest in ensuring the security of each other’s high-altitude satellites. Destroying a nuclear command-and-control satellite, even unintentionally, could lead a conventional conflict to escalate into a nuclear war. Those critical satellites face the threat of being attacked by co-orbital anti-satellite weapons, that is, other spacecraft with offensive capabilities. They even pose a danger to China’s Tiangong Space Station and the International Space Station, where personnel-including Russia’s own cosmonauts-were forced to don spacesuits and flee into their escape capsules ahead of approaching debris.īut the greatest danger that this careless stunt highlighted is to a different potential target: high-altitude satellites used for nuclear command and control. Hypersonic fragments from the collision with Moscow’s ground-launched, anti-satellite weapon risk destroying other satellites used for communications, meteorology, and agriculture. When Russia blew up an old satellite with a new missile on November 15, it created an expanding cloud of debris that will menace the outer space environment for years to come.
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