Starfish Prime
Encyclopedia
Starfish Prime was a high-altitude nuclear test
High altitude nuclear explosion
High-altitude nuclear explosions have historically been nuclear explosions which take place above altitudes of 30 km, still inside the Earth's atmosphere. Such explosions have been tests of nuclear weapons, used to determine the effects of the blast and radiation in the exoatmospheric...

 conducted by the United States of America on July 9, 1962, a joint effort of the Atomic Energy Commission
United States Atomic Energy Commission
The United States Atomic Energy Commission was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by Congress to foster and control the peace time development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S...

 (AEC) and the Defense Atomic Support Agency (which became the Defense Nuclear Agency in 1971).

Launched via a Thor
PGM-17 Thor
Thor was the first operational ballistic missile of the U.S. Air Force . Named after the Norse god of thunder, it was deployed in the United Kingdom between 1959 and September 1963 as an intermediate range ballistic missile with thermonuclear warheads. Thor was in height and in diameter. It was...

rocket and carrying a W49
W49
The W49 was an American thermonuclear warhead, used on the Thor, Atlas, Jupiter, and Titan I ballistic missile systems. W49 warheads were manufactured starting in 1958 and were in service until 1963, with a few warheads being retained until 1975....

 thermonuclear warhead (manufactured by Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...

) and a Mk. 4 reentry vehicle
Atmospheric reentry
Atmospheric entry is the movement of human-made or natural objects as they enter the atmosphere of a celestial body from outer space—in the case of Earth from an altitude above the Kármán Line,...

, the explosion took place 250 miles (402.3 km) above a point 19 miles (30.6 km) southwest of Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

. It was one of five tests conducted by the USA in outer space
Outer space
Outer space is the void that exists between celestial bodies, including the Earth. It is not completely empty, but consists of a hard vacuum containing a low density of particles: predominantly a plasma of hydrogen and helium, as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, and neutrinos....

 as defined by the FAI
Fédération Aéronautique Internationale
The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale is the world governing body for air sports and aeronautics and astronautics world records. Its head office is in Lausanne, Switzerland. This includes man-carrying aerospace vehicles from balloons to spacecraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles...

. It produced a yield equivalent to 1.4 megatons
TNT equivalent
TNT equivalent is a method of quantifying the energy released in explosions. The ton of TNT is a unit of energy equal to 4.184 gigajoules, which is approximately the amount of energy released in the detonation of one ton of TNT...

 of TNT.

Operation Fishbowl

The Starfish test was one of five high altitude tests grouped together as Operation Fishbowl
Operation Fishbowl
Operation Fishbowl was a series of high altitude nuclear tests in 1962 that were carried out by the United States as a part of the larger Operation Dominic nuclear test program.-Introduction:...

 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.

In 1958 the United States had completed six high-altitude nuclear tests, but the high-altitude tests of that year produced many unexpected results and raised many new questions. According to the U.S. Government Project Officer's Interim Report on the Starfish Prime project:


"Previous high-altitude nuclear tests: YUCCA
Operation Hardtack I
Operation Hardtack I was a series of 35 nuclear tests conducted by the United States in 1958 in the Pacific Ocean.Operation Newsreel was a series of three high-altitude nuclear tests conducted as part of Hardtack I. The individual tests in the series were Orange‎, Teak‎ and Yucca‎.-Test Blasts:-...

, TEAK
Hardtack Teak
HARDTACK-Teak was an exoatmospheric high altitude nuclear weapon test performed during Operation Hardtack I. It was launched from Johnston Island on a Redstone missile. On 1 August 1958, the 3.8 Mt shot detonated at an altitude of 76.8 km. Teak caused communications impairment over a...

, and ORANGE
Operation Hardtack I
Operation Hardtack I was a series of 35 nuclear tests conducted by the United States in 1958 in the Pacific Ocean.Operation Newsreel was a series of three high-altitude nuclear tests conducted as part of Hardtack I. The individual tests in the series were Orange‎, Teak‎ and Yucca‎.-Test Blasts:-...

, plus the three ARGUS
Operation Argus
Operation Argus was a series of nuclear weapons tests and missile tests secretly conducted during August and September 1958 over the South Atlantic Ocean by the United States's Defense Nuclear Agency, in conjunction with the Explorer 4 space mission. Operation Argus was conducted between the...

 shots were poorly instrumented and hastily executed. Despite thorough studies of the meager data, present models of these bursts are sketchy and tentative. These models are too uncertain to permit extrapolation to other altitudes and yields with any confidence. Thus there is a strong need, not only for better instrumentation, but for further tests covering a range of altitudes and yields."


The Starfish test was originally planned as the second in the Fishbowl series, but the first launch (Bluegill
Operation Fishbowl
Operation Fishbowl was a series of high altitude nuclear tests in 1962 that were carried out by the United States as a part of the larger Operation Dominic nuclear test program.-Introduction:...

) was lost by the radar tracking equipment and had to be destroyed in flight.

The initial Starfish launch attempt on June 20 was aborted in flight due to failure of the Thor
PGM-17 Thor
Thor was the first operational ballistic missile of the U.S. Air Force . Named after the Norse god of thunder, it was deployed in the United Kingdom between 1959 and September 1963 as an intermediate range ballistic missile with thermonuclear warheads. Thor was in height and in diameter. It was...

 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 of the warhead. The missile was between 30,000 and 35,000 feet (between 9.1 and 10.7 km) in altitude when it was destroyed. Parts of the missile and some radioactive contamination fell upon Johnston Island and nearby Sand Island and the surrounding ocean.


The Starfish Prime explosion

On 9 July 1962, at 09:00:09 Coordinated Universal Time
Coordinated Universal Time
Coordinated Universal Time is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is one of several closely related successors to Greenwich Mean Time. Computer servers, online services and other entities that rely on having a universally accepted time use UTC for that purpose...

, (which was 8 July, Honolulu time, at nine seconds after 11 p.m.), the Starfish Prime test was successfully detonated at an altitude of 400 kilometres (248.5 mi). The coordinates of the detonation were 16 degrees, 28 minutes North latitude, 169 degrees, 38 minutes West longitude. The actual weapon yield was very close to the design yield, which has been described by various sources at different values in the range of 1.4 to 1.45 megatons
Nuclear weapon yield
The explosive yield of a nuclear weapon is the amount of energy discharged when a nuclear weapon is detonated, expressed usually in the equivalent mass of trinitrotoluene , either in kilotons or megatons , but sometimes also in terajoules...

 (6.0 PJ).

The Thor missile carrying the Starfish Prime warhead reached a maximum height of about 1100 km (just over 680 miles), and the warhead was detonated on its downward trajectory when it had fallen to the programmed altitude of 400 kilometres (248.5 mi). The nuclear warhead detonated at 13 minutes and 41 seconds after liftoff of the Thor missile from Johnston Island.

Starfish Prime caused an electromagnetic pulse
Electromagnetic pulse
An electromagnetic pulse is a burst of electromagnetic radiation. The abrupt pulse of electromagnetic radiation usually results from certain types of high energy explosions, especially a nuclear explosion, or from a suddenly fluctuating magnetic field...

 which 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 1445 kilometres (897.9 mi) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights, setting off numerous burglar alarms and damaging a telephone company microwave
Microwave
Microwaves, a subset of radio waves, have wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz. This broad definition includes both UHF and EHF , and various sources use different boundaries...

 link. The EMP-damaged microwave link shut down telephone calls from Kauai
Kauai
Kauai or Kauai, known as Tauai in the ancient Kaua'i dialect, is geologically the oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands. With an area of , it is the fourth largest of the main islands in the Hawaiian archipelago, and the 21st largest island in the United States. Known also as the "Garden Isle",...

 to the other Hawaiian islands
Hawaiian Islands
The Hawaiian Islands are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll...

.

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

A very large number of United States military ships and aircraft were operating in support of Starfish Prime in the Johnston Island 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
Samoan Islands
The Samoan Islands or Samoa Islands is an archipelago covering in the central South Pacific, forming part of Polynesia and the wider region of Oceania...

. This location was at the southern end of the magnetic field line of the Earth's magnetic field
Earth's magnetic field
Earth's magnetic field is the magnetic field that extends from the Earth's inner core to where it meets the solar wind, a stream of energetic particles emanating from the Sun...

 from position of the nuclear detonation, an area known as the southern conjugate region for the test. In addition, an uninvited scientific expeditionary ship from the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 was stationed near Johnston Island for the test and another Soviet scientific expeditionary ship was located in the southern conjugate region near the Samoan Islands.

After the Starfish Prime detonation, bright auroras were observed in the detonation area as well as in the southern conjugate region on the other side of the equator from the detonation. According to one of the first technical reports, "The visible phenomena due to the burst were widespread and quite intense; a very large area of the Pacific was illuminated by the auroral phenomena, from far south of the south magnetic conjugate area (Tongatapu
Tongatapu
Tongatapu is the main island of the Kingdom of Tonga and the location of its capital Nukualofa. It is located in Tonga's southern island group, to which it gives its name, and is the country's most populous island, with approximately 71,260 residents , 70.5% of the national population...

) through the burst area to far north of the north conjugate area (French Frigate Shoals
French Frigate Shoals
The French Frigate Shoals is the largest atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Its name commemorates French explorer Jean-François de La Pérouse, who nearly lost two frigates when attempting to navigate the shoals...

). . . . At twilight after the burst, resonant scattering of light from lithium
Lithium
Lithium is a soft, silver-white metal that belongs to the alkali metal group of chemical elements. It is represented by the symbol Li, and it has the atomic number 3. Under standard conditions it is the lightest metal and the least dense solid element. Like all alkali metals, lithium is highly...

 and other debris was observed at Johnston and French Frigate Shoals for many days confirming the long time presence of debris in the atmosphere. An interesting side effect was that the Royal New Zealand Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
The Royal New Zealand Air Force is the air arm of the New Zealand Defence Force...

 was aided in anti-submarine maneuvers by the light from the bomb."

In part, these auroral effects were predicted by Nicholas Christofilos
Nicholas Christofilos
Nicholas Constantine Christofilos was a Greek-American physicist.Christofilos was born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Greece...

, a scientist who had earlier worked on the Operation Argus
Operation Argus
Operation Argus was a series of nuclear weapons tests and missile tests secretly conducted during August and September 1958 over the South Atlantic Ocean by the United States's Defense Nuclear Agency, in conjunction with the Explorer 4 space mission. Operation Argus was conducted between the...

 high-altitude nuclear shots.

According to U.S. atomic veteran Cecil R. Coale, some hotels in Hawaii offered "rainbow bomb" parties on their roofs for Starfish Prime, contradicting some reports that the artificial aurora was unexpected.

Pages 19–21 of "A 'Quick Look' at the Technical Results of Starfish Prime", August 1962 states http://glasstone.blogspot.com/2006/03/emp-radiation-from-nuclear-space.html:
"At Kwajalein
Kwajalein
Kwajalein Atoll , is part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands . The southernmost and largest island in the atoll is named Kwajalein Island. English-speaking residents of the U.S...

, 1,400 [nautical] miles [2,600 km; 1,600 mi] to the west, a dense overcast extended the length of the eastern horizon to a height of 5 or 8 degrees. At 0900 GMT a brilliant white flash burned through the clouds rapidly changing to an expanding green ball of irradiance extending into the clear sky above the overcast. From its surface extruded great white fingers, resembling cirro-stratus clouds, which rose to 40 degrees above the horizon in sweeping arcs turning downward toward the poles and disappearing in seconds to be replaced by spectacular concentric cirrus like rings moving out from the blast at tremendous initial velocity, finally stopping when the outermost ring was 50 degrees overhead. They did not disappear but persisted in a state of frozen stillness. All this occurred, I would judge, within 45 seconds. As the greenish light turned to purple and began to fade at the point of burst, a bright red glow began to develop on the horizon at a direction 50 degrees north of east and simultaneously 50 degrees south of east expanding inward and upward until the whole eastern sky was a dull burning red semicircle 100 degrees north to south and halfway to the zenith obliterating some of the lesser stars. This condition, interspersed with tremendous white rainbows, persisted no less than seven minutes."

"At zero time at Johnston, a white flash occurred, but as soon as one could remove his goggles, no intense light was present. A second after shot time a mottled red disc was observed directly overhead and covered the sky down to about 45 degrees from the zenith. Generally, the red mottled region was more intense on the eastern portions. Along the magnetic north-south line through the burst, a white-yellow streak extended and grew to the north from near zenith. The width of the white streaked region grew from a few degrees at a few seconds to about 5-10 degrees in 30 seconds. Growth of the auroral region to the north was by addition of new lines developing from west to east. The white-yellow auroral streamers receded upward from the horizon to the north and grew to the south and at about 2 minutes the white-yellow bands were still about 10 degrees wide and extended mainly from near zenith to the south. By about two minutes, the red disc region had completed disappearance in the west and was rapidly fading on the eastern portion of the overhead disc. At 400 seconds essentially all major visible phenomena had disappeared except for possibly some faint red glow along the north-south line and on the horizon to the north. No sounds were heard at Johnston Island that could be definitely attributed to the detonation."

"Strong electromagnetic signals were observed from the burst, as were significant magnetic field disturbances and earth currents."


In 2006, Palmer Dyal described the particle and field measurements of the Starfish diamagnetic cavity and the injected beta flux into the artificial radiation belt in the Journal of Geophysical Research
Journal of Geophysical Research
The Journal of Geophysical Research is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Geophysical Union 80 times per year. It contains original research on the physical, chemical, and biological processes that contribute to the understanding of the Earth, Sun, and solar system...

. His measurements describe the explosion from 0.1 milliseconds to 16 minutes after the detonation.

Aftereffects

While some of the energetic beta particle
Beta particle
Beta particles are high-energy, high-speed electrons or positrons emitted by certain types of radioactive nuclei such as potassium-40. The beta particles emitted are a form of ionizing radiation also known as beta rays. The production of beta particles is termed beta decay...

s followed the Earth's magnetic field and illuminated the sky, other high-energy electrons became trapped and formed radiation belts around the earth. There was much uncertainty and debate about the composition, magnitude and potential adverse effects from this trapped radiation after the detonation. The weaponeers became quite worried when three satellites in low earth orbit
Low Earth orbit
A low Earth orbit is generally defined as an orbit within the locus extending from the Earth’s surface up to an altitude of 2,000 km...

 were disabled. These man-made radiation belts eventually crippled one-third of all satellites in low earth orbit. Seven satellites failed over the months following the test as radiation damaged
Radiation hardening
Radiation hardening is a method of designing and testing electronic components and systems to make them resistant to damage or malfunctions caused by ionizing radiation , such as would be encountered in outer space, high-altitude flight, around nuclear reactors, particle accelerators, or during...

 their solar array
Photovoltaic module
A solar panel is a packaged, connected assembly of solar cells, also known as photovoltaic cells...

s or electronics, including the first commercial relay communication satellite, Telstar
Telstar
Telstar is the name of various communications satellites, including the first such satellite to relay television signals.The first two Telstar satellites were experimental and nearly identical. Telstar 1 was launched on top of a Thor-Delta rocket on July 10, 1962...

. Detectors on Telstar, TRAAC, Injun
Injun (satellite)
The Injun program was a series of six satellites designed and built by researchers at the University of Iowa. They were intended to observe various radiation and magnetic phenomena in the ionosphere and beyond....

, and Ariel 1
Ariel 1
Ariel 1, also known as UK-1 and S-55, was the first British satellite, and the first satellite in the Ariel programme. Its launch in 1962 made the United Kingdom the third country to operate a satellite, after the Soviet Union and the USA...

 were used to measure distribution of the radiation produced by the tests.

In 1963, Brown et al. reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research that Starfish Prime had created a belt of MeV electrons, and Wilmot Hess
Wilmot N. Hess
Wilmot N. Hess was an American physicist. He was involved with many ambitious scientific projects of the 20th century including the Plowshares project, the NASA Apollo moon missions, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hurricane research and oil spill cleanup research, the...

 reported in 1968 that some Starfish electrons remained for five years. Others reported that radioactive particles from Starfish Prime descended to earth seasonally and accumulated in terrestrial organisms such as fungi and lichen
Lichen
Lichens are composite organisms consisting of a symbiotic organism composed of a fungus with a photosynthetic partner , usually either a green alga or cyanobacterium...

s.

Resulting scientific discoveries

  • The Starfish bomb contained Cd-109 tracer which helped work out the seasonal mixing rate of polar and tropical air masses.
  • The Starfish EMP waveform measured by Richard L. Wakefield of Los Alamos led to a revolution in understanding this nuclear effect.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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