US agrees not to test anti-satellite missiles

USA He promised this Monday not to carry out any more tests with anti-satellite missiles and urged other countries to follow his example, after criticizing the tests of this type that they have launched. Russia Y China in recent years.

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The announcement made by the US Vice President, Kamala Harris, makes the United States the first country in the world to prohibit such tests, which several powers have carried out so far to destroy their own satellites and artifacts in space.

“These tests are reckless and they are irresponsible and they jeopardize a lot of what we do in space,” Harris said during a visit to the Vandenberg space base in California.

“We will work with other countries to make this a new international norm for responsible behavior in space,” added the vice president.

The United States thus seeks to mark a contrast with Russia, which last November, when testing an anti-satellite missile, generated “hazardous waste” that put the International Space Station (ISS) “at risk”, NATO denounced then.

According to the US Space Command, the Russian test generated more than 1,600 pieces of debris, which “will now orbit the Earth for years or even decades,” Harris said.

The Pentagon estimates that there are still another 2,800 pieces of debris generated by another anti-satellite missile test that China carried out 15 years ago with the aim of destroying an old weather satellite, the vice president added.

Russia, China, India and the United States are the four countries in the world that have so far destroyed their own satellites in tests of this type.

The last one carried out by the United States occurred in 2008, when it launched a tactical missile against a US spy satellite that was falling on Earth and whose toxic gases could have caused damage to the population.

The US government stressed that these risks to the Earth’s population distinguished its test from those of China and Russia, which it accuses of developing such technology to limit US advances in space and possibly to destroy US satellites in the future.

“A basketball-sized piece of space junk, traveling at thousands of miles per hour, could destroy a satellite. Even a piece of debris the size of a grain of sand could cause serious damage,” Harris stressed on Monday.

In 2019, the United States created a Pentagon command dedicated to space operations to counter the strength of China and Russia in that area, which more and more experts see as a battlefield between the great powers.

Source: Elcomercio

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