A Russian spacecraft launched higher than most satellites has long had the Pentagon worried — and new revelations about what it contains have made those concerns all the greater.
Launched in February 2022 just a few weeks before Ukraine was invaded, Russia’s Cosmos 2553 spacecraft is nominally built to test out “newly developed onboard instruments and systems.” According to new reporting from the New York Times, however, the mysterious satellite system contains a “dummy warhead” — a precursor of what could come should the Russians decide to arm the craft for real.
As scary as the concept of a space nuke sounds, it wouldn’t necessarily harm life on Earth — unless you consider eliminating all satellites in its vicinity harm, in which case the people down on the planet below would be seriously screwed.
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Back in 1962, the US military actually did detonate a nuclear weapon in space, though the damage from the electromagnetic pulse it emanated seems mostly to have been limited to streetlights dimming in Hawaii, which was below the test.
Scientists learned from that formerly-classified test that doing so was probably a pretty bad idea, and in 1967, both Russia and the United States signed the Outer Space Treaty to prevent, essentially, space warfare. In the years since, however, concerns have grown that Russia may violate the treaty — especially as more and more communications satellites began littering our planet’s orbit.
After Russia released Cosmos 2553 some 250 miles above the planet’s surface, military experts became concerned that it might be a secret nuclear weapon. As the NYT’s new reporting reveals, the US Space Force and a group of intelligence agencies have quietly been looking into the satellite to try to figure out its real purpose.
Throughout 2024, more and more information about the alleged anti-satellite weapon began to trickle out of Washington. In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied that it’s any such thing — though notably, it doesn’t appear he’s made any such denial since the NYT reported that Cosmos 2553 contains a dummy warhead.
Despite those refutations, Russia vetoed in April a United Nations resolution that would bar nuclear weapons in space. If the NYT’s reporting holds up, we may know why
The Byte
