Anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon test
Deliberate destruction of a satellite by an anti-satellite weapon, generating a debris cloud that threatens every object in low Earth orbit.
November 15, 2021: a Russian missile destroys Cosmos 1408, a defunct Soviet satellite, leaving more than 1,500 tracked debris fragments in low Earth orbit. The ISS crew shelters. That is the pattern of an anti-satellite test: a state deliberately destroys a satellite, usually one of its own defunct spacecraft, to demonstrate a military capability. Unlike an accidental collision, the event is intentional and its scale foreseeable to the state that fires, but the orbital consequences escape its control once the debris cloud exists. A test in low Earth orbit can generate several thousand trackable fragments, spread across a wide range of altitudes and orbital lifetimes, and some threaten satellites and crewed stations for years or even decades. Space insurers face two questions. The first is the war or hostile-act exclusion common in space policies, which such an event may trigger. The second is accumulation, since a single test degrades the operating environment of an entire orbital shell and with it the future loss experience of many unrelated insureds. Several spacefaring powers keep running these tests, which makes them a systemic risk factor for the whole sector.
On November 15, 2021, Russia destroyed its defunct Cosmos 1408 satellite with an anti-satellite missile, generating more than 1,500 trackable debris fragments and forcing the International Space Station crew to shelter in their return vehicles.
ASAT test, anti-satellite weapon, kinetic ASAT, debris-generating test
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