Could Russia Really Bring the Space Station Down on the United States?

If, in space, relations between the Russians and their Western and Japanese partners in the International Space Station (ISS) program have always been cordial and pragmatic, the situation has evolved unfavorably. As the European Space Agency, engaged in several programs with Russia, reminds us, ” even in times of high political tensions, space missions have always been examples of peaceful and concrete cooperation in the field of science and technology, for the benefit of humanity “.

But, it is to be feared that tomorrow space cooperation with Russia in new programs will be more difficult, if not impossible. That said, despite the strong tensions between Putin and Biden, it is obviously very unlikely that the master of the Kremlin will decide to “attack” the ISS as some statements by Russian officials and senior officials might suggest. .

If Russia can easily disrupt the proper functioning of the orbital complex, or even to de-orbit it in an uncontrolled way and make it fall back to Earth, it is not as simple as it seems. As explained in a previous article, in January 2031, the end of life of the ISS, three Russian Progress cargo ships will be needed to deorbit it in a controlled manner above point Nemo. Today, the single Progress cargo ship docked at the ISS is not enough for this.

In the worst-case scenario, Putin could order the cosmonauts Russians on board the ISS to evacuate it, then to turn on the engines of the Progress by accelerating very strongly with a bias to bring it to a orbit as low as possible to a point where it would no longer be possible to raise it. Among the other possibilities, that of generating a very strong torque so as to make it spin on itself in an irretrievable way.

In both cases, the Nasa couldn’t do anything. It clearly demonstrated the theoretical feasibility of ascending the Station’s orbit using a cargo ship Cygnus except that they are of no use for this type of maneuver because the ports on which the Cygnus moor are not aligned in the right direction. This is also why theEuropean Space Agency ATV docked in the same place as the Russian Progress freighters to ascend the Station’s orbit.

Conflict in Ukraine: what if the Russians had also prepared hostilities in space

Let’s face it, the Russians won’t forcibly deorbit the ISS because they have no way of controlling its reentry so that what won’t be destroyed while traversing theatmosphere could crash on Russian or Chinese territory or on one of its allies! Added to this is that the Russian part is still worth several billion dollars and they plan to use it until 2030.

Nevertheless, the Russians do have a power to nuisance in low orbit. And this is perhaps where the situation could be most problematic for Americans and Europeans. According to several specialists, the Russians may have prepared a new form of war asymmetric with the Asat shot of November 15, 2021 when a missile destroyed one of their old electronic eavesdropping satellites. Either way, the destruction of a satellite in flight is not new but what has changed in this case, and very few people realized it at first, is that this Asat shot had the hidden objective of disrupting the proper functioning of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites which are in a complementary orbit.

The distribution of debris as produced by the explosion of the satellite was certainly intended to constrain the satellites star link to perform many maneuvers. You should know that the Russian debris generates bursts, clusters of alerts for many satellites! And that is unprecedented.

A cloud of debris with unprecedented behavior…

Usually after the destruction of a satellitethe cloud of debris lost all its cohesion after 6 to 12 months, which does not seem to be the case with this cloud. In retrospect, one can think that the Asat firing of November 15 allowed the Russians, and this is a strong and rather surprising hypothesis, to train for today’s situation. Not to threaten the International Space Station but to disrupt the operation of many American satellites, whether civilian and military observation satellites or those of the Starlink constellation.

You should know that the impact against the satellite had the particularity of increments of speed weak so that the debris did not disperse as usual. It is necessary to note theintelligence of the maneuver. The debris, with an inclination of about 82° is also complementary to the 98° inclination which is the inclination of the satellites sun-synchronous.

This orbit is used by many observation, meteorological or remote sensing satellites for example. As a result, this gives a very large number of collision risk alerts with, potentially, frontal collisions by package. As if a submachine gun were shooting hundreds of pieces of debris in the direction of a satellite!

Concretely, rather than frontally attacking an American military satellite, typically of the Keyhole type, the idea would be to destroy a Russian satellite which is nearby, so that the cloud of debris generated, subjects the satellite to “strafing”. debris in order…