The United States will no longer conduct hostile satellite tests, Vice President Kamala Harris announced on Monday. With this announcement, the country seeks to establish a new norm for responsible behavior in the field.
“These tests have been condemned over and over and over again, but that’s not enough,” Harris said. “Today we are moving forward. I am happy to announce that as of today, the United States has decided not to conduct direct-ascent nuclear tests against satellites. Simply: These tests are dangerous, and we will not conduct them . It is the first country to make such a commitment. And I invite all countries to join us.”
Harris made his comments Monday evening during a visit to Vandenberg Space Force Base, a former launch site on the American West Coast. During his speech, Harris said that the US government will work with other countries to establish this as a new international norm for responsible behavior in space, noting that the completion of such tests will benefit all countries and help to maintain the area of the low Earth orbit.
In particular, the US military will no longer conduct “direct ascent” anti-satellite tests, which means missiles launched from Earth with the intention of destroying a specific satellite. This method is a powerful force that has been demonstrated to date by the United States, Russia, China, and India. Since the 1960s these countries have conducted more than a dozen tests to demonstrate strength to friends and foes.
The problem with such tests, beyond their jingoistic nature, is that they create a lot of dangerous debris, pieces of satellites drifting across many orbits, and it sometimes takes decades for this debris to lose altitude and burn in the Earth’s atmosphere.
“If a satellite is taken out by debris, it can affect the daily weather forecast, GPS driving directions, and even your favorite TV station,” Harris said. “Critical equipment, such as the wind turbines that power our homes, well, they rely on satellites for connectivity. Satellites help us diagnose the climate crisis. They make our businesses run. . And they help us protect our soldiers and our people. All of this is threatened by the debris created by these reckless experiments.”
In general, these tests are done about 6,300 pieces of debris that can be tracked, said Brian Weeden, director of the Program at Secure Global Security. At least 4,300 pieces of that debris remain in orbit today, posing long-term threats to human spaceflight, science and national security missions, and future economic development of space.
“I think this is very important,” Weeden said of Harris’ announcement. “That’s a really important first step toward ending that kind of testing, and I commend the Biden administration for being willing to take that initial step.”
The announcement comes six months after Russia fired the defunct Tselina-D satellite that has been in low-Earth orbit about 500 km above the Earth’s surface since 1982. Western governments, including the United States, condemned the test. “carelessness.” Astronauts aboard the International Space Station, including Russian cosmonauts, took cover for more than two hours due to concerns about contamination from the experiment.
“With its long history and history in human spaceflight, it is unthinkable that Russia would endanger not only American and international astronauts on the ISS, but also their own cosmonauts,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. after the show. “Their actions are reckless and dangerous, threatening both the Chinese space station and the taikonauts on board.”
Russia said the test it does not threaten any objects in orbit and is only done as part of measures to “strengthen” the country’s defense capability.