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Ad Astra:\u00a0The coming battle over space<\/em>, Harpers Magazine, November 2021 Issue<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n All armies prefer high ground to low. This is the opening quote from the cover story in the new issue of Harpers Magazine.<\/p>\n There may not be a more famous book than The Art of War<\/em>.<\/p>\n And as with many observations in the book, the profundity is often in the what would seem the most obvious and least profound.<\/p>\n Be that as it may.<\/p>\n When this quote comes under the title of the article,\u00a0Ad Astra:\u00a0The coming battle over space<\/em>, it feels like getting hit by the detonation of the universe by weaponry.<\/p>\n Because that’s the real life subject–at least to the extent that the field of battle is moving to space, the potential destructive impact is terrifying and the ultimate impact is unknown.<\/p>\n Ad Astra<\/em> is Latin for “To the stars”.<\/p>\n It has a much better ring to it absent the rest of the title.<\/p>\n But the rest of the title is reality, and we ignore reality at our peril.<\/p>\n We often note that we often emphasize the critical importance of an article or say things along the lines of “if this subject doesn’t compel you to read, what will”, and so on.<\/p>\n Well, if this subject doesn’t compel you to read, what will?<\/p>\n Here it is:<\/p>\n “Ad Astra:\u00a0The coming battle over space”<\/a><\/p>\n By Rachel Riederer,\u00a0<\/strong>Illustrations by Shonagh\u00a0Rae, Cover Story, November 2021 Issue, Harpers Magazine<\/p>\n All armies prefer high ground to low. In late January 2020, in an orbital belt around 640 kilometers above Earth, two unmanned Russian spacecrafts coasted through the sky toward USA-245,<\/em>an American reconnaissance satellite.<\/p>\n From this elevation a traveler would have seen the earth as a rounded slope of green and brown. One could have made out the rugged edges of mountains and the contours of lakes, our white atmosphere, bowed around the planet, darkening to blue and then black. Seen from a backyard telescope, the satellites would have looked like small glimmers in the night, with light from the sun glinting off their alloyed coating as if off a distant windshield.<\/p>\n The Russian crafts had positioned themselves unusually close to the American, in a near-identical orbit, and they had synced their paths with USA-245<\/em>\u2014a classified, multibillion-dollar KH-11 satellite, equipped with imaging systems on par with the Hubble telescope\u2014such that one of them came within twenty kilometers of it several times in a single day. Satellites in the same plane may on occasion pass within one hundred kilometers of one another but far less frequently. The Russians, it seemed, were stalking an American spy satellite.<\/p>\n The larger of the two Russian crafts, Kosmos-2542,<\/em> had first entered the same orbital plane as USA-245<\/em> in late November, launched from a Soyuz rocket. This in itself was not a notable occurrence, and the two passed each other only once in eleven days. But on December 6, the Russian vessel seemed to split in two. In fact, it had spat out another, smaller craft. Speaking later, in February, General John W.\u00a0\u201cJay\u201d Raymond, chief of the newly established Space Force, would describe it by saying, \u201cThe way I picture it, in my mind, is like Russian nesting\u00a0dolls.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Russia, Kosmos-2542 <\/em>was an inspector satellite, a type of craft also used by the United States and China. Inspectors are smaller, more agile machines with precise navigation and controls, most often employed to closely approach or dock with friendly crafts to assess for maintenance. The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that the satellite born from Kosmos-2542,<\/em> called Kosmos-2543, <\/em>was also an inspector, and described its begetting as an \u201cexperiment,\u201d intended to further maintenance of its fleet. Russia also noted that 2542<\/em> was equipped with cameras powerful enough to photograph the earth\u2019s surface. USA-245<\/em> slowly lifted into a higher orbit, away from the Russian satellites, while Kosmos-2543,<\/em> the baby, zipped around the sky and, in the words of a later published space-threat assessment from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), changed its orbit \u201cconstantly\u201d\u2014an exceptional performance in space, where fuel is precious.<\/p>\n Then, on January 22, both Russian crafts approached radically closer to the American. For two months, they shadowed USA-245,<\/em> one of the two never traveling more than a thousand kilometers from it. One observer noted that their orbital paths were synced such that they were closest to the American when it was in bright sunlight: the ideal choreography for taking photographs.<\/p>\n When Raymond first spoke publicly on the events, in an interview with Time,<\/em> he called the activity \u201cunusual and disturbing,\u201d and noted that \u201cinspection\u201d of a satellite by an enemy craft is not discernibly different from an approach preceding an attack. An offensive strike could take the form of an old-fashioned kinetic assault\u2014objects hurled through space\u2014or chemical sprays, lasers, signal jammers, and more. The antagonism of Russia\u2019s approach was clear. Kaitlyn Johnson, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at CSIS, told me that the behavior was \u201creally unusual, very intentional, and pushing the limits.\u201d But, she added, whether it was espionage or one-upmanship, it was not\u00a0illegal.<\/p>\n In mid-April, Russia tested a direct-ascent anti-satellite weapon (DA-ASAT)\u2014a missile launched from Earth rather than from a vessel already in orbit. The country had tested this weapon system\u2014named Nudol, after a river near Moscow\u2014multiple times before, and the UnitedStates, China, and India had all performed DA-ASAT tests in years prior, each demolishing defunct satellites of their own. The Russian weapon seemed intended for a target in open space: it sailed through the sky and then fell back to Earth, where it likely landed in the Laptev Sea. U.S. Space Command issued a statement the same day, declaring the test evidence of the growing threats to U.S. space systems and deeming it \u201chypocritical\u201d: Russia had publicly called for \u201cfull demilitarization\u201d in space. Space Command also took the opportunity to comment on the nesting dolls. Russia, the statement said, had \u201cconducted maneuvers near a U.S. Government satellite that would be interpreted as irresponsible and potentially threatening in any other domain.\u201d In a line attributed to Raymond directly, it warned that the United States was \u201cready and committed to deterring aggression and defending the Nation, our allies and U.S. interests from hostile acts in\u00a0space.\u201d<\/p>\n But the Russians were not done. On July 15, Kosmos-2543,<\/em> the smaller of the stalking pair, itself released a smaller object. It did not approach a U.S. craft, but both the American and British militaries called it a weapon: Russia, they claimed, had fired a projectile in orbit. U.S.\u00a0Space Command has remained mum on the precise details of what happened. Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astrophysicist and satellite watcher, told me that it was clear that an object had been discharged at high speed but that it was hard to say whether the intent was to test a weapon or a defense system\u2014an especially vexing distinction in space. The action was \u201csimilar,\u201d a statement from U.S.\u00a0Space Command said, to one by Russia in 2017, and \u201cinconsistent\u201d with the claim that the crafts were inspectors. In response, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the release of the new object was merely part of a \u201cclose inspection\u201d and that \u201cmost importantly, it did not breach any norms or principles of international law,\u201d calling the American assessment of the events \u201cpropaganda,\u201d and volleying back the accusation of hypocrisy: the United States and Britain, it said, \u201cnaturally keep silent about their own efforts\u201d and \u201cprograms on the possible use of\u00a0.\u2009.\u2009. counter-satellite weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n Doug Loverro, the former executive director of the Air Force\u2019s Space and Missile Systems Center and the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy, told me that the projectile was \u201ca clear provocation.\u201d And yet Russia was right: they still had not broken any law. There were no precise rules guiding how the United States or any military should respond in a case like this\u2014no code with which to say that the Russian satellites had come too close, none determining the nondestructive firing of a weapon as a breach. And there was no military maneuver the United States could have taken to counter the nesting dolls without risking severe escalation.<\/p>\n In fact, the primary source for international law in space is a drastically outdated document from 1967 called the Outer Space Treaty, designed for an environment far simpler than the current field. In a September 2019 address at a conference for air, space, and cyber security, General Raymond put it this way: \u201cThe Outer Space Treaty says you can\u2019t have nuclear weapons in space. That\u2019s about what it says. The rest is the wild, wild\u00a0West.\u201d<\/p>\n On July 8, 1962, just after 11\u00a0pm, the sky over Hawaii turned, in a moment, from black to blazing. Streetlights went out, all at once; radios stopped working. For several minutes, a red orb, edged in purple, surrounding a luminous yellow core, made the night as bright as day. It then dimmed, slowly, receding into color-changing auroras. When these lights faded, they left behind a spectral glow that persisted for hours and could be seen throughout the\u00a0Pacific.<\/p>\n The United States had just detonated a 1.4-megaton nuclear warhead in space. Launched from the Johnston Atoll, an isolated island that had gone from seabird refuge to seaplane landing base to weapons-testing site, the hydrogen bomb exploded two hundred and fifty miles above the earth\u2019s surface. The bomb, code-named Starfish Prime, was a hundred times more powerful than the one that had been dropped on Hiroshima seventeen years earlier. It produced an instantaneous surge of voltage, followed by a slow-rolling distortion of the earth\u2019s magnetic field and a belt of radiation that rippled outward in space and lasted for months. The electromagnetic impact was more significant than government scientists had expected, and the radiation damaged several satellites, American and Soviet. But the United States and the USSR both tested several more nuclear bombs at high altitude that year, including two each in space, one of which, by the Soviets, caused a fire in a power station in Kazakhstan. Space\u2014where exploration had just begun\u2014was being weaponized.<\/p>\n Several of these tests took place that October, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, after which the possibility of nuclear war seemed intolerably near. In August of the next year, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union signed a treaty prohibiting further testing of nuclear weapons in Earth\u2019s atmosphere, underwater, or in outer space. But the United States and the Soviet Union had still other concerns about the heavens: one of the two nations would make it to the moon first and could stake a claim, establishing a military base on that ultimate high ground. They pursued a second treaty as a hedge, using that agreement to declare that space would be free from territorial competition.<\/p>\n That document, the Outer Space Treaty, was signed by the United States, the USSR, and sixty other nations on the evening of January 27, 1967, in the East Room of the White House. Just an hour and fifteen minutes after they convened, a fire broke out, down the East Coast at Cape Canaveral, in the cockpit of the grounded Apollo 1<\/em> command module. The first three American astronauts in the moon shot program were killed within minutes. The disaster and the Outer Space Treaty shared the front page of the next morning\u2019s New York Times.<\/em><\/p>\n The U.S. Army\u2019s largest ground offensive in the Vietnam War had recently culminated in the burning and bulldozing of the village of Ben Suc. In San Francisco, on January 14, some twenty thousand young people had converged in Golden Gate Park for the concerts and demonstrations of the Human Be-In. The treaty reflected a politics both entrenched in and sick of war, and a vision of outer space as a canvas\u2014perilous but pristine\u2014where earthly politics could be transformed. Its first article stated that space exploration \u201cshall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries\u00a0.\u2009.\u2009. and shall be the province of all mankind.\u201d The agreement also established that exploration of outer space was to be \u201cguided by the principle of co-operation and mutual assistance.\u201d All astronauts were to be \u201cregarded as envoys of mankind\u201d\u2014afforded aid when in distress, and safe passage when landing in enemy seas. The treaty further made each nation responsible for damages its crafts might cause,1<\/sup><\/a> and liable for all objects launched from its territory\u2014the result of heavy negotiation, as the Soviets were initially opposed to private entities in the cosmos. Importantly, no nation could claim sovereignty over the moon, other celestial bodies, or any expanse of\u00a0space.<\/p>\n More than half a century later, this Cold War document remains the basis for all extraterrestrial law. It bans placing nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction into orbit\u2014as Raymond noted\u2014but it says nothing of Earth-to-space or space-to-space arms, nor does it speak to kinetic weapons or the many subtler forms of attack developed since its drafting. The agreement is silent on what constitutes hostile behavior, and though it states that international law extends into space, there is no ready translation of earthly rules to a realm without national borders or gravity, and with limitless potential planes of conflict. As the years have gone by and other nations have joined the United States and Russia in space, and as astronautic technologies have become vastly more sophisticated, the insufficiency of the Outer Space Treaty has become a significant\u00a0danger.<\/p>\n At Joint Base Andrews in late December 2019, at the signing ceremony establishing the new United States Space Force, President Donald Trump gave his assessment of the nation\u2019s position in space: \u201cWe\u2019re leading, but we\u2019re not leading by enough. But very shortly we\u2019ll be leading by a lot.\u201d \u201cSpa-ssss,\u201d he said occasionally, drawing out the latter consonant in a\u00a0hiss.<\/p>\n Judging by the assessments of security experts and the ambitions of the military, he was correct. In the spring of 2020, both CSIS and the Secure World Foundation, a think tank focused on security in space, released reports finding that stability in space, long sustained by the United States\u2019 sheer dominance there, was waning. As Kaitlyn Johnson from CSIS said: \u201cOther nations are catching up.\u201d And despite the bluster with which the Space Force had been introduced, and its seeming absurdity to much of the general public, military scholars and commanders were divided only on the question of separating space missions from the Air Force and into their own\u00a0branch.<\/p>\n Since 2015, Russia, China, India, Iran, Israel, France, and North Korea have all established military space programs. China\u2019s and Russia\u2019s space commands are close on the heels of the United States, and according to the Secure World Foundation, the United States has idled certain of its offensive-technology programs while China and Russia actively test the same capabilities. Over the course of the past two years, martial activity beyond our atmosphere has exploded, and in conversations this summer, many space and security experts told me that the pressure is rising. \u201cWe are watching tensions ratchet up,\u201d said Jack Beard, a former Department of Defense attorney and a professor of law specializing in\u00a0space.<\/p>\n In March 2019, India tested its first direct-ascent anti-satellite weapon, blowing up one of its own crafts in low Earth orbit. In April 2020, when Iran announced the creation of its military space program, it slung its first reconnaissance satellite, Noor\u00a01 <\/em>(\u201cLight 1\u201d in Farsi), into orbit. In September of that year, China successfully launched a reusable craft, dubbed a \u201cspaceplane,\u201d which cruises in low Earth orbit and returns to the planet in one piece, landing horizontally. (The United States has developed its own spaceplane, the U.S. X-37B, <\/em>first launched in 2010, but its missions have been classified since 2004, and it\u2019s not clear how the crafts compare.) This May, China landed a rover on Mars and declared its intention to establish a long-term human presence\u00a0there.<\/p>\n When China successfully tested a direct-ascent ASAT weapon in 2007, it was seen as a wake-up call for the Pentagon. And though only China, Russia, India, and the United States now have demonstrated kinetic ASAT capability, satellites are susceptible to many less spectacular forms of attack. North Korea is known to be developing signal jammers to block satellite transmissions, and Iran has cyberattack capacity that could disrupt space-based signals and corrupt data. Even Japan, a country with a pacifist constitution that prohibits offensive military action, is preparing defenses for space combat, such as robotic arms to protect satellites.<\/p>\n General Raymond has stated, and analysts believe, that China has been building high-powered lasers to blast sensors on satellites, effectively blinding them.2<\/sup><\/a> China has also demonstrated \u201cspoofing\u201d technology, a type of interference where a satellite\u2019s signal is mimicked by a fake. In July 2019, a U.S. container ship, the MV Manukai,<\/em> and several other vessels in the port of Shanghai received false GPS signals, which experts believe were likely sent by the Chinese military, including notifications of phantom ships fast approaching. Though the Manukai<\/em>\u2019s captain was able to see, with binoculars, that the GPS was wrong, the spoof could have been disastrous.<\/p>\n While many experts say that the likelihood of kinetic war\u2014bombs bursting in space\u2014is impossible to assess, conflict in less overt forms is already playing out. \u201cIn some respects,\u201d Loverro told me, \u201cwe\u2019ve already had war in space.\u201d In 2007 and 2008, hackers believed to be from China attacked U.S. satellites operated by the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA. In the latter case, they gained control of the craft, but stopped short of issuing it commands. The Russian government, meanwhile, has been accused of widespread, malicious signal jamming, including, in 2018, disrupting GPS transmissions during a NATO exercise in Scandinavia and disabling American surveillance drones in\u00a0Syria.<\/p>\n All this comes at a time of exponential growth in the commercial use of space. When Russia launched the first man-made satellite, Sputnik<\/em>\u00a01,<\/em> from a cosmodrome on the Kazakh steppe in 1957, the small aluminum sphere entered a near abyss. But the orbital belts surrounding Earth are now a crowded highway of around seven thousand satellites, moving at speeds of up to seventeen thousand miles an hour. Many of these machines are used for both civilian and military purposes. Three thousand of them are no longer in operation, and travel alongside around fifteen thousand pieces of space debris sizable enough to observe from Earth: the shrapnel of blasted satellites, old rocket boosters, and more, including items lost during space walks (a camera, a blanket, a spatula). U.S. Space Command tracks this dreck, alongside satellites, and alerts operators around the world when objects are due to collide. Though actual crashes are rare, the military now issues more than a hundred thousand of these warnings each day. Those who study the subject commonly describe the current play of space as \u201ccongested, contested, and competitive.\u201d<\/p>\n The vast majority of satellites are split between the two most useful zones around the earth: the more accessible low Earth orbit (LEO), which begins about five hundred kilometers from the planet\u2019s surface and is ideal for telecommunications and imaging, and geosynchronous orbit (GEO), thirty-six thousand kilometers away, where satellites move more slowly and in time with the earth\u2019s rotation, making them stationary relative to given points on the planet and ideal for meteorology. Elon Musk\u2019s broadband project, Starlink, is currently veiling the world in a mega-constellation of new satellites. As of this May, Starlink has launched more than 1,700 of them into LEO. These now make up over a quarter of all functional satellites orbiting Earth. According to Hugh Lewis, an astronautics researcher in the United Kingdom, they account for roughly half of all close calls\u2014cases in which objects have passed within one kilometer of each other.3<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/em>\u2014Sun Tzu, The Art of War<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n<\/em>\u2014Sun Tzu, The Art of War<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/harpers.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Harpers_1121_24-25_01.jpg\")
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