Russia’s plans to launch a new space station to host cosmonauts – and even space tourists from around the world – could represent a remarkable deterrent to its Strategic Rocket Force detonating a nuclear warhead in orbit, say space defense scholars in Washington and London.
Ever since American intelligence agencies discovered a top-secret Kremlin project to develop nuclear warheads that would circle the planet and stalk Western spacecraft, U.S. defense leaders have been war-gaming how to counter Moscow’s new weapons without entering an atomic arms race in space.
President Vladimir V. Putin and his inner security circle have fired off a fusillade of threats to deploy nuclear missiles against any NATO ally directly helping democratic Ukraine defend against Russia’s invasion, and the new weaponized spacecraft could be integrated into a larger nuclear offensive, say experts on the Russian military.
But Moscow’s sending the new space lab and habitat into low Earth orbit would cut the chances of its bursting a nuclear bomb in the same orbital plane.
“I still don’t think Russia will use a nuclear ASAT in orbit barring a direct war with U.S./NATO,” for fear of destroying its own spacecraft, along with those of its allies, says Elena Grossfeld, an expert on Moscow’s military and civilian space programs at King’s College London.
After Moscow launches its Russian Orbital Station, “the likelihood of its striking objects in orbit, whether with conventional or nuclear ASAT weapons,” would plummet, says Spenser Warren, an expert on Russia’s drive to modernize its nuclear arsenal at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.
“Nuclear detonations are indiscriminate in space, and Russian leaders would be well aware of that, so it would make the use of a nuclear device in low Earth orbit increasingly unlikely,” Warren told me in an interview.
After conducting a series of simulated nuclear explosions in orbit with a range of warheads with progressively higher yields, scholars at the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency reported the detonation of a 5000 kiloton warhead near the International Space Station would bring quick deaths to the ISS crew.
The blast, they said, would cause “radiation sickness to the astronauts within approximately one hour and a 90% probability of death within 2-3 hours.”
Another nuclear physicist says igniting a powerful warhead above the Earth could destroy spacecraft not only in the line of sight of the explosion, but also on the other side of the globe.
Yury Borisov, head of the Russian space agency, signed off recently on blueprints to loft the first module of the Russian Orbital Station in 2027, with cosmonauts sent to operate the outpost a half-year later.
Borisov, a one-time deputy defense minister and overseer of the Kremlin’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, could be considered an insider on the extreme dangers a thermonuclear blast would present to a nearby space station.
During a midsummer meeting, the space chief also gave the go-ahead for development of “a next-generation manned spacecraft” to augment the time-tested Soyuz capsules that now speed Russian spacefarers to the International Space Station.
Roscosmos is set to withdraw from the ISS partnership in 2028, and the new orbital outpost will allow it to compete with the other leading space powers and prepare for missions to the Moon under a pact it has forged with China to co-construct an International Lunar Research Station.
The deputy head of Russia’s colossal Energia Rocket and Space Corp, Vladimir Solovyov, told the TASS state news agency the Orbital Station will feature “a module for four space tourists” who could be connected up with their family and friends back on Earth, and with the cyberspace world, via WiFi.
Solovyov, who is also “Chief Designer for Russia’s Piloted Space Systems,” predicted the Russian Orbital Station, by continuously adding new modules and ejecting older ones, could have structural life well into the 2070s.
He added long-living “piloted systems in near-Earth orbit should be developed to operate as elements of a future interplanetary station.”
President Putin christened the new station project, which will cost more than a half-trillion rubles, as Russia prepares to end its last collaboration with the democratic space powers on the ISS.
“Putin clearly pushed Roscosmos Director Yuri Borisov to come up with a plan for Russia’s next-generation space station,” says James Clay Moltz, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey and one of the leading American scholars on advances in space weaponry across the globe.
“But that doesn’t guarantee that he will fund it,” he told me in an interview. “Much of this discussion seems to be about keeping up the appearance of having a robust civil space program, rather than actually paying for and delivering one.”
“Given Roscosmos’s declining budget, it seems highly unlikely that this station will be built either on time or maybe ever,” predicts Professor Moltz, author of a series of captivating books on competition and conflict involving the great space powers, including The Politics of Space Security.
“The declining Roscosmos budget for civil space has several factors,” he adds, “the high costs of the war in Ukraine, a refocusing of Russian space spending to military programs, and the sharp decline in Russia’s commercial launch revenues due to its isolation from the West.”
But University of California scholar Spenser Warren predicts Roscosmos “can at some point launch a new space station if the Russian leadership thinks it’s beneficial for strategic, status, economic, or political reasons.”
“Maybe it’s a stepping stone to some militarized program, or Russia wants a greater space presence to compete with American/Chinese/Indian increases.”
Yet he adds that diverting government funds to Putin’s all-consuming quest to conquer Ukraine, along with “the continued loss of the highly-educated workforce either because they are fighting and possibly dying in Ukraine or because they’re fleeing the country” could all delay the lift-off of the Russian Orbital Station.
