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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 EMP observed at the Apia Observatory at Samoa was four times more powerful than any created by solar storms, [1] while in July 1962 the Starfish Prime test damaged electronics in Honolulu and New Zealand (approximately 1,300 kilometres (810 mi) away), fused 300 street lights on Oahu (Hawaii), set off about 100 burglar alarms, and caused the ...
The EMP damage of the Starfish Prime test was quickly repaired due, in part, to the fact that the EMP over Hawaii was relatively weak compared to what could be produced with a more intense pulse, and in part due to the relative ruggedness (compared to today) [10] of Hawaii's electrical and electronic infrastructure in 1962. [11]
After most of the electromagnetic pulse measurements on Starfish Prime had failed because the EMP was so much larger than expected, extra care was taken to obtain accurate EMP measurements on the Bluegill Triple Prime and Kingfish tests. The EMP mechanism that had been hypothesized before Operation Fishbowl had been conclusively disproven by ...
Although the weapons used in the K Project were much smaller (up to 300 kilotons) than the United States Starfish Prime test of 1962, the damage caused by the resulting EMP was much greater because the K Project tests were done over a large populated land mass, and at a location where the Earth's magnetic field was greater.
The Starfish Prime radiation belt had, by far, the greatest intensity and duration of any of the artificial radiation belts. [1] The Starfish Prime radiation belt damaged the United Kingdom Satellite Ariel 1 and the United States satellites, Traac, Transit 4B, Injun I and Telstar I. It also damaged the Soviet satellite Cosmos V. All of these ...
The effect was so disconcerting that both the Soviets and US broke the informal testing moratorium that had been in place since late 1958 to run series of tests to gather further information on the various high-altitude effects like blackout and electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Blackout is a particular concern for anti-ballistic missile (ABM ...
One early test of electronic space warfare, the so-called Starfish Prime test, took place in 1962 when the United States exploded a ground-launched nuclear weapon in space to test the effects of an electromagnetic pulse. The result was a deactivation of many then-orbiting satellites, both American and Soviet.