Tag Archives: ASAT

Earlier this month, the Russian military conducted an anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test, launching a PL19 Nudol interceptor missile at a now-defunct Soviet-era intelligence satellite, KOSMOS 1408. The impact obliterated the spacecraft, creating a debris field consisting of approximately 1500 pieces of trackable debris, and potentially hundreds of thousands of pieces that are too small to monitor with ground-based radar. In ...

Expedition 66 crew members, from left to right: Pyotr Dubrov, Tom Marshburn, Anton Shkaplerov, Raja Chari, Mark Vande Hei, Kayla Barron, and Matthias Maurer. Credit: NASA The seven-person crew living on the International Space Station resumed normal operations Wednesday, two days after closing off parts of the complex as precaution following a widely-condemned Russian anti-satellite test that created a new ...

Cut-away view of the Almaz space station, for which Russian developed technologies to defend it from ASAT attacks. (source) During the Cold War the Soviet Union was the only country to have an operational co-orbital anti-satellite (ASAT) system. Called IS (“Satellite Destroyer”), it began test flights in 1963 and reached operational status in the late 1970s. What is less known ...