The U.S. had just detonated a thermonuclear bomb 100 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima. Launched on a missile from Johnston Atoll, a U.S. unincorporated territory between the Marshall Islands and Hawaii, the bomb exploded at 250 miles above Earth's surfacearound the altitude in low-Earth orbit of most modern-day satellites.
The blast generated a power surge over the Pacific Ocean that knocked out about 300 streetlights on the island of Oahuand destroyed or damaged about a third of the roughly two dozen satellites then in orbit.
“The Starfish Prime shot is sort of the poster child for why we don't like nukes blowing up in space, says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
Only a few years later, in 1967, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed on to the Outer Space Treaty, which forbade putting weapons of mass destruction in orbit.
#thermonuclear-bomb-detonation #nuclear-weapons-in-space #outer-space-treaty #historical-event #government-policy
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