President Putin is leading a military parade with huge intercontinental missiles. Putin has threatened … (+)
Russia’s plans to build a new space station to host cosmonauts and even space tourists from around the world could provide a significant deterrent to Russia’s Strategic Missile Force, which could detonate a nuclear warhead in orbit, space defense experts in Washington and London say.
Since US intelligence agencies discovered a top-secret Kremlin project to develop nuclear warheads that would orbit the planet and attack Western spacecraft, the leaders of the US defence industry have been feverishly looking for ways to counter Moscow’s new weapons without getting caught in a nuclear arms race in space.
President Vladimir V. Putin and his inner security circle have fired a barrage of threats to deploy nuclear missiles against any NATO ally that would directly help democratic Ukraine defend itself against the Russian invasion. The new weaponized spacecraft could also be integrated into a larger nuclear offensive, Russian military experts say.
However, if Moscow were to place the new space laboratory and habitat into a low Earth orbit, this would reduce the likelihood of a nuclear bomb being detonated in the same orbit.
“I still don’t think Russia will deploy a nuclear ASAT in orbit unless there is a direct war with the US/NATO,” says Elena Grossfeld, an expert on Moscow’s military and civilian space programs at King’s College London. The country fears destroying its own spacecraft in addition to those of its allies.
Once Moscow has its Russian orbital station up and running, “the likelihood of it hitting objects in orbit, either with conventional or nuclear ASAT weapons,” will drop dramatically, says Spenser Warren, an expert on Russia’s efforts to modernize its nuclear arsenal at the University of California’s Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation.
Orbit of the Mir space station on a world map. The Russian orbital station is a … (+)
“Nuclear bombs detonate indiscriminately in space, and Russian leaders are well aware of this. Therefore, the use of a nuclear bomb in low Earth orbit is becoming increasingly unlikely,” Warren told me in an interview.
After conducting a series of simulated nuclear explosions in orbit using warheads of increasing power, scientists at the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency reported that the detonation of a 5,000-kiloton warhead near the International Space Station would mean a rapid death for the ISS crew.
They said the explosion would “cause radiation sickness in the astronauts within about an hour and would result in death with a 90 percent probability within two to three hours.”
Another nuclear physicist says that detonating a powerful warhead above Earth could destroy spacecraft not only in the field of view of the explosion, but also on the other side of the Earth.
Yuri Borisov, the head of the Russian space agency, recently signed the plans for the launch of the first module of the Russian orbital station in 2027. Six months later, cosmonauts will be sent to operate the outer station.
Borisov, a former deputy defense minister and overseer of the Kremlin’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, could be considered an insider when it comes to the extreme danger a thermonuclear explosion would pose to a nearby space station.
During a meeting in mid-summer, the space chief also gave the green light to the development of a “next-generation manned spacecraft” to complement the proven Soyuz capsules that currently quickly ferry Russian astronauts to the International Space Station.
Russia’s space czar has commissioned a successor to the Soviet Soyuz rocket, which is now … (+)
Roscosmos is expected to withdraw from the ISS partnership in 2028. The new space outpost will allow the corporation to compete with the other leading space powers and prepare for missions to the moon as part of an agreement with China to jointly build an International Lunar Research Station.
The co-head of the giant Russian rocket and space company Energia, Vladimir Solovyov, told the state news agency TASS that the orbital station would have “a module for four space tourists” who could be connected via Wi-Fi to their family and friends on Earth and to the cyberspace world.
Solovyov, who is also “chief designer of Russia’s manned space systems,” predicted that by continuously adding new modules and ejecting old ones, the Russian orbital station could have a structural life well into the 2070s.
He added that long-lived “manned systems in low Earth orbit should be developed that could function as elements of a future interplanetary station.”
President Putin christened the new station project, which will cost more than half a trillion rubles, at a time when Russia is preparing to withdraw from the ISS coalition – its last cooperation with the democratic space powers.
“Putin has clearly pushed Roscosmos director Yuri Borisov to come up with a plan for Russia’s next-generation space station,” says James Clay Moltz, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey and one of the world’s leading American experts on space weapons development.
“But that doesn’t guarantee that he’ll fund it,” he told me in an interview. “This discussion seems to be more about maintaining the appearance of a robust civilian space program than about actually funding and running one.”
“Given Roscosmos’s shrinking budget, it seems highly unlikely that this station will be built on time or ever,” predicts Professor Moltz, author of a series of compelling books on competition and conflict between the major space powers, including The policy of space security.
“There are several reasons for Roscosmos’ declining civil space budget,” he adds, “the high cost of the war in Ukraine, a reorientation of Russian space spending toward military programs, and the sharp decline in Russia’s revenues from commercial space launches due to its isolation from the West.”
Russia helped build the International Space Station, but is preparing to withdraw from the ISS multi-state solution … (+)
But University of California scientist Spenser Warren predicts that Roscosmos could “launch a new space station at some point if the Russian leadership deems it advantageous for strategic, status, economic or political reasons.”
“Perhaps it is a stepping stone for a military program, or Russia wants a larger presence in space to compete with the American, Chinese and Indian surge.”
However, he adds that the diversion of state funds to Putin’s all-consuming plan to conquer Ukraine, as well as “the ongoing loss of highly skilled workers, either because they are fighting and possibly dying in Ukraine or because they are fleeing the country” could delay the launch of the Russian orbital station.
