Burning Frost, the view from the ground: shooting down a spy satellite in 2008

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2021-06-22 09:00:05

In February 2008, a missile fired from the Aegis class cruiser USS Lake Erie, several hundred kilometers northwest of Hawaii, blasted high into the sky and a few minutes later destroyed a malfunctioning top-secret American satellite. The operation was known as “Burnt Frost,” and according to American officials, it was undertaken to prevent potentially toxic debris from the satellite from falling on populated areas. The operation occurred only a few months after a heavily criticized Chinese anti-satellite test produced a large amount of orbital debris. The American action was designed to minimize the generation of debris but was nevertheless controversial. Now, a newly published account of the decision-making that led to the American action provides unique insight into how it was made. The author, orbital debris expert and longtime space writer Nicolas Johnson, died in April at age 71, and his article, titled “Operation Burnt Frost: A View From Inside,” was made available free of charge by the journal Space Policy.

During the 1980s, Johnson was the editor of a publication called The Soviet Year in Space. First published in 1983, it appeared annually until 1990, at which point the name was changed to Europe and Asia in Space and published in 1992 and 1994, before publication ceased. The Soviet Year in Space was an unclassified report based on open sources and covering Soviet space activities for the previous year. It was an invaluable resource for understanding how Soviet space efforts were evolving and improving. It was produced under contract for the Department of Defense and proved to be a highly reliable source of unclassified information on its topic.

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