STARFISH PRIME, A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION OUTER SPACE

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Starfish Prime, the high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States, that took place on this day in 1962.

It is tragic to think how these countries, like the USA, have used other territories to conduct nuclear tests without taking into account the autonomy of these countries or the consequences that these tests could have on the population and the natural environment.

Starfish Prime was a high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States, a joint effort of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the Defense Atomic Support Agency. It was launched from Johnston Atoll on July 9, 1962, and was the largest nuclear test conducted in outer space, and one of five conducted by the US in space.

A Thor rocket carrying a W49 thermonuclear warhead (designed at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) and a Mk. 2 reentry vehicle was launched from Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, about 1,450 km west-southwest of Hawaii. The explosion took place at an altitude of 400 km, above a point 31 km southwest of Johnston Atoll. It had a yield of 5.9 PJ. The explosion was about 10° above the horizon as seen from Hawaii, at 11 pm Hawaii time.

The Starfish test was one of five high-altitude tests grouped together as Operation Fishbowl within the larger Operation Dominic, a series of tests in 1962 begun in response to the Soviet announcement on August 30, 1961, that they would end a three-year moratorium on testing.

The Starfish test was originally planned as the second in the Fishbowl series, but the first launch (Bluegill) was lost by the radar tracking equipment and had to be destroyed in flight.

The initial Starfish launch attempt on June 20 was also aborted in flight, this time due to failure of the Thor launch vehicle. The Thor missile flew a normal trajectory for 59 seconds; then the rocket engine stopped, and the missile began to break apart. The range safety officer ordered the destruction of the missile and warhead. The missile was between 30,000 and 9,100 and 10,700 m in altitude when it was destroyed. Parts of the missile and some radioactive contamination fell upon Johnston Atoll, nearby Sand Island, and the surrounding ocean.

On July 9, 1962, at 09:00:09 Coordinated Universal Time (11:00:09 pm on July 8, 1962, Honolulu time), the Starfish Prime test was detonated at an altitude of 400 km. The coordinates of the detonation were 16°28′N 169°38′W. The actual weapon yield came very close to the design yield, which various sources have set at different values in the range of 5.9 to 6.1 PJ. The nuclear warhead detonated 13 minutes 41 seconds after liftoff of the Thor missile from Johnston Atoll.

Starfish Prime caused an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that was far larger than expected, so much larger that it drove much of the instrumentation off scale, causing great difficulty in getting accurate measurements. The Starfish Prime electromagnetic pulse also made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 1,450 km away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights,  setting off numerous burglar alarms, and damaging a telephone company microwave link. The EMP damage to the microwave link shut down telephone calls from Kauai to the other Hawaiian Islands.

A total of 27 small rockets were launched from Johnston Atoll to obtain experimental data from the Starfish Prime detonation. In addition, a large number of rocket-borne instruments were launched from Barking Sands, Kauai, in the Hawaiian Islands.

A large number of United States military ships and aircraft were operating in support of Starfish Prime in the Johnston Atoll area and across the nearby North Pacific region.

A few military ships and aircraft were also positioned in the region of the South Pacific Ocean near the Samoan Islands. This location was at the southern end of the magnetic field line of the Earth's magnetic field from the position of the nuclear detonation, an area known as the southern conjugate region for the test. An uninvited scientific expeditionary ship from the Soviet Union was stationed near Johnston Atoll for the test, and another Soviet scientific expeditionary ship was in the southern conjugate region near the Samoan Islands.

At the time of the Starfish Prime explosion, the physics department of the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, was operating an airglow photometer at a field station near Rolleston, twenty miles southeast of Christchurch. The photometer was designed and calibrated by Dr. I. Filosofo and others at the Illinois Institute of technology.

The airglow observation program was part of upper atmosphere research directed by Dr. C. Ellyett.

On July 9, 1962, Samuel Neff and his wife Ruth Neff were at the Rolleston field station to operate the photometer and record any observations. Photometric results were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Letters. Christchurch is on approximately the same longitude as Johnston Island, but is much further from the equator, consequently, the earth’s magnetic lines of force entering the atmosphere near Christchurch were assumed to be too far above Johnston Island for there to be much linkage between Christchurch and the explosion. This assumption proved to be false.

The Starfish bomb contained 109Cd as a tracer, which helped work out the seasonal mixing rate of polar and tropical air masses.

Accurate determination of the decay constant for the 1D state of the ground configuration of the oxygen atom.

More information: MIRA Safety

 Hiroshima has become a metaphor not just for nuclear war 
but for war and destruction and violence toward civilians. 
It's not just the idea we should not use nuclear arms. 
We should not start another war because it's madness.

Max von Sydow