Early research into EMP weapons

The date of Ariel-1’s demise was no coincidence. The satellite failed four days after the US detonated a 1.4 megaton nuclear warhead, in an experiment known as Starfish Prime, high in the atmosphere 400 kilometres (250 miles) above the Pacific Ocean. The explosion – the world’s most powerful high altitude nuclear test – created an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) strong enough to disrupt global radio communications and even blow out streetlights on the ground in Hawaii. It also created a new (temporary) radiation belt around the Earth and it was this that did for Ariel-1.

When British officials finally pieced together the full story, it fell to science minister, Lord Hailsham, to write to the Prime Minister. His 1962 memo – typed over two pages – relates the saga in some of the most florid, and appropriately Shakespearean language, to ever grace a government document.

“Although badly wounded in his solar paddles,” wrote Hailsham to the PM, “he is not quite dead. He still utters intermittently – sometimes intelligibly. He may still improve sufficiently to tell us something of value, though he can hardly say ‘merrily shall I live now’. We have got a great deal out of him during his life (short, but neither nasty nor brutish). Before his accident he had transmitted for approximately a thousand hours, and it will take at least a year to analyse the significance of what he has said.”

Most well-written memo ever ? Perhaps.

Fears that this EMP technology might also proliferate in space have been much discussed by governments, parliaments and military strategists. But Quintana, who studies developments in weaponry, is not convinced. “It’s a largely overblown threat,” she contends. Space is already a hostile enough electromagnetic environment, with satellites and spacecraft being continuously bombarded with cosmic rays and charged particles from the Sun. An EMP weapon – even a repeat of Starfish Prime – Quintana argues, would have little additional effect on modern satellites already hardened against radiation.

Although Starfish Prime destroyed primitive space infrastructure in 1962, there are far more effective, and cheaper, technologies to take out modern satellite systems.

For around $20 for instance you could purchase a GPS jamming device. Illegal or, at best, semi-legal in most countries these locally block the weak signals from navigation satellites. Communications satellites are also relatively easy to jam by directly aiming a radio beam towards them. In recent years BBC Persia TV signals, for instance, have been blocked in this way by Iran. There is even evidence that China has developed a ground based laser system to dazzle spy satellites as they pass overhead.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150910-the-nuke-that-fried-satellites-with-terrifying-results