The problem with kinetic kill anti-satellite weapons is that they create debris clouds. Unless the satellite is at a low altitude and about to de-orbit, that’s generally bad.
In early 2013, the Russian concept satellite BLITS collided with what is believed to be a piece of debris from Fengyun-1C, was knocked out of its orbit and soon afterwards data retrieval from the satellite ceased.
Kessler is inevitable. Today, no one will cancel satellite launch because others asked them not to. Since humanity is not capable of cooperating we will end up with satellites Cold War. We actually in it already. I’d rather let them learn the hard way and make them all crash, than use it for military advantage. Yeah, some satellites are useful like wildfire monitoring and GNSS, others are either flex or military. Maybe loosing all those useful one will make humanity cooperate and lunch only what really necessary in coordinated and transparent way
No idea if anyone has done anything to make this more than an idea, but if you want to de-orbit someone else’s satellite safely you could use a laser broom. Whe you vaporise stuff with a laser, the material that ablates off of the object imparts a bit of thrust to that object. This means that zapping a satellite with a laser can potentially slow it down just like pushing it with a rocket. It also has the benefit of being useable on any other troublesome debris, and it can be reused between jobs (assuming you solved the engineering challenges of Big Space Laser)
The problem with kinetic kill anti-satellite weapons is that they create debris clouds. Unless the satellite is at a low altitude and about to de-orbit, that’s generally bad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_debris_producing_events
EDIT: And apparently that debris cloud from that anti-satellite weapon test is believed to have taken out a Russian satellite:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_missile_test
Kessler is inevitable. Today, no one will cancel satellite launch because others asked them not to. Since humanity is not capable of cooperating we will end up with satellites Cold War. We actually in it already. I’d rather let them learn the hard way and make them all crash, than use it for military advantage. Yeah, some satellites are useful like wildfire monitoring and GNSS, others are either flex or military. Maybe loosing all those useful one will make humanity cooperate and lunch only what really necessary in coordinated and transparent way
Then maybe a rocket that sticks to the target and pushes it out of orbit. Maybe down to the atmosphere if in LEO or away if geosync.
You’re describing drone warfare in space. Neat…
No idea if anyone has done anything to make this more than an idea, but if you want to de-orbit someone else’s satellite safely you could use a laser broom. Whe you vaporise stuff with a laser, the material that ablates off of the object imparts a bit of thrust to that object. This means that zapping a satellite with a laser can potentially slow it down just like pushing it with a rocket. It also has the benefit of being useable on any other troublesome debris, and it can be reused between jobs (assuming you solved the engineering challenges of Big Space Laser)