![]() And, while Soviet-era ASAT tests launched from different systems, Monday's test was the first intercept with Russia's modern system, McDowell said. ![]() With earlier tests of this same ASAT system, Russia likely aimed its weapon at "an imaginary point in space, pretending there was a satellite there," McDowell said.īut this time, the test hit a real target in low Earth orbit: a defunct Soviet satellite called Cosmos 1408 that hasn't functioned since the 1980s. "This is like the 11th or 12th test of that system, but it will be the first one that was actually an intercept," meaning that the test mission actually impacted a satellite and destroyed it, Weeden said. Previously, with Russia, "the multiple tests we saw were all rocket tests or flight tests," space policy expert Brian Weeden, a director of program planning at Secure World Foundation, told. "They're suborbital rockets that home in on a target satellite and destroy it by just sitting in the way while the satellite smashes into it at 17,000 miles an hour ," McDowell said. ![]() ![]() Different countries have different systems, but currently ASAT weapons that launch from Earth and are not space-based are relatively similar. ![]()
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