In case you missed them, here’s a few pieces I’ve recently written and published in Nature and Undark magazines. Thanks as usual to my excellent editors! I’m only posting brief excerpts here, so if you’re interested, please check out the whole thing using the links below.
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NEW DELHI, INDIA – JANUARY 26: Anti-Satellite Weapons (ASAT) from Mission Shakti during Republic Day Parade at Rajpath, on January 26, 2020 in New Delhi, india. (Photo by Ramesh Pathania/Mint via Getty Images)
As Risks of Space Wars Grow, Policies to Curb Them Lag
A pair of recent reports point to growing space threats, but efforts to prevent conflicts are stagnant or out of step.
On April 22, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced a successful launch of what they described as a military reconnaissance satellite, which came after several failed attempts. The satellite joined a growing list of weapons and military systems in orbit, including Russia’s test of a missile system designed to destroy satellites, also in April, and India’s test of an anti-satellite weapon, which the country launched in March 2019.
Experts like Brian Weeden, director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation (SWF), a nonpartisan think tank based in Broomfield, Colorado, worry that these developments — all confirmed by the newly reestablished United States Space Command — threaten to lift earthly conflicts to new heights and put all space activities, peaceful and military alike, at risk. Researchers at SWF and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., both released reports this year on this rapidly evolving state of affairs. The reports suggest that the biggest players in space have advanced their space military abilities, including anti-satellite weapons, which destroy satellites, and technologies that merely disrupt spacecraft, for instance by blocking data collection or transmission.
Many of these technologies, if deployed, could ratchet up an arms race and even spark a war in space, the SWF and CSIS researchers caution. Just blowing up a single satellite scatters debris throughout the atmosphere, said Weeden, co-editor of the SWF report. Such an explosion could hurl projectiles in the paths of other spacecraft and threaten the accessibility of space for everyone…
[Read the entire essay in Undark magazine, published on 6 July.]
Ramin Skibba 