List of artificial radiation belts - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Artificial radiation belts are radiation belts that have been created by high altitude nuclear explosion

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...

**List of Artificial Radiation Belts**
Explosion	Location	Date	Yield 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... (approximate)	Altitude (km)	Nation of Origin
Hardtack 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...	Johnston Island (Pacific)	1958-08-01	3.8 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...	76.8	United States United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Hardtack Orange	Johnston Island (Pacific)	1958-08-12	3.8 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...	43	United States United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Argus I 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...	South Atlantic	1958-08-27	1-2 kilotons	200	United States United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Argus II 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...	South Atlantic	1958-08-30	1-2 kilotons	256	United States United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Argus III 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...	South Atlantic	1958-09-06	1-2 kilotons	539	United States United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Starfish Prime Starfish Prime Starfish Prime was a high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States of America on July 9, 1962, a joint effort of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Defense Atomic Support Agency ....	Johnston Island (Pacific)	1962-07-09	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...	400	United States United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
K-3 The K Project The K Project, or also Operation K, was a series of five high altitude nuclear explosions, nuclear tests performed by the Soviet Union during the years 1961 and 1962. Their purpose was to test the performance of anti-ballistic missiles of the ABM System A and their resistance against nuclear blasts...	Kazakhstan Kazakhstan Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...	1962-10-22	300 kilotons	290	USSR 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....
K-4 The K Project The K Project, or also Operation K, was a series of five high altitude nuclear explosions, nuclear tests performed by the Soviet Union during the years 1961 and 1962. Their purpose was to test the performance of anti-ballistic missiles of the ABM System A and their resistance against nuclear blasts...	Kazakhstan Kazakhstan Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...	1962-10-28	300 kilotons	150	USSR
K-5 The K Project The K Project, or also Operation K, was a series of five high altitude nuclear explosions, nuclear tests performed by the Soviet Union during the years 1961 and 1962. Their purpose was to test the performance of anti-ballistic missiles of the ABM System A and their resistance against nuclear blasts...	Kazakhstan Kazakhstan Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...	1962-11-01	300 kilotons	59	USSR

The table above only lists those high-altitude nuclear explosions for which a reference exists in the open (unclassified) English-language scientific literature to persistent artificial radiation belts resulting from the explosion.

The Starfish Prime

Starfish Prime

Starfish Prime was a high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States of America on July 9, 1962, a joint effort of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Defense Atomic Support Agency ....

radiation belt had, by far, the greatest intensity and duration of any of the artificial radiation belts.

The Starfish Prime radiation belt damaged the United States satellites 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...

, Traac

Transit Research and Attitude Control

The Transit Research and Attitude Control satellite was launched by the U.S. Navy from Cape Kennedy along with Transit 4B on November 15, 1961. The 109 kg satellite was used to test the feasibility of using gravity-gradient stabilization in Transit navigational satellites...

, Transit 4B, Injun I

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 Telstar I

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...

. It also damaged the Soviet satellite Cosmos V

Kosmos 5

Kosmos 5 , also known as 2MS #2 and occasionally in the West as Sputnik 15 was a scientific research and technology demonstration satellite launched by the Soviet Union in 1962. It was the fifth satellite to be designated under the Kosmos system, and the third spacecraft to be launched as part of...

. All of these satellites failed completely within several months of the Starfish detonation.

Telstar I lasted the longest of the satellites damaged by the Starfish Prime radiation, with its complete failure occurring on February 21, 1963.

In 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...

report LA-6405, Herman Hoerlin gave the following explanation of the history of the original Argus experiment and of how the nuclear detonations lead to the development of artificial radiation belts.

"Before the discovery of the natural Van Allen belts

Van Allen radiation belt

The Van Allen radiation belt is a torus of energetic charged particles around Earth, which is held in place by Earth's magnetic field. It is believed that most of the particles that form the belts come from solar wind, and other particles by cosmic rays. It is named after its discoverer, James...

in 1958, N. C. Christofilos

Nicholas Christofilos

Nicholas Constantine Christofilos was a Greek-American physicist.Christofilos was born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Greece...

had suggested in October 1957 that many observable geophysical effects could be produced by a nuclear explosion at high altitude in the upper atmosphere. This suggestion was reduced to practice with the sponsorship of the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) of the Department of Defense and under the overall direction of Herbert York

Herbert York

Herbert Frank York was an American nuclear physicist. He held numerous research and administrative positions at various United States government and educational institutes.-Biography:...

, who was then Chief Scientist of ARPA. It required only four months from the time it was decided to proceed with the tests until the first bomb was exploded. The code name of the project was 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...

. Three events took place in the South Atlantic. ... Following these events, artificial belts of trapped radiation were observed.

"A general description of trapped radiation is as follows. Charged particles move in spirals around magnetic-field lines

Field line

A field line is a locus that is defined by a vector field and a starting location within the field. Field lines are useful for visualizing vector fields, which are otherwise hard to depict...

. The pitch angle (the angle between the direction of the motion of the particle and direction of the field line) has a low value at the equator and increases while the particle moves down a field line in the direction where the 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...

strength increases. When the pitch angle becomes 90 degrees, the particle must move in the other direction, up the field lines, until the process repeats itself at the other end. The particle is continuously reflected at the two mirror

Magnetic mirror

A magnetic mirror is a magnetic field configuration where the field strength changes when moving along a field line. The mirror effect results in a tendency for charged particles to bounce back from the high field region....

points — it is trapped in the field. Because of asymmetries in the field, the particles also drift around the earth, electrons towards the east. Thus, they form a shell around the earth similar in shape to the surface formed by a field line rotated around the magnetic dipole

Dipole

In physics, there are several kinds of dipoles:*An electric dipole is a separation of positive and negative charges. The simplest example of this is a pair of electric charges of equal magnitude but opposite sign, separated by some distance. A permanent electric dipole is called an electret.*A...

axis."

In 2010, the United States Defense Threat Reduction Agency

Defense Threat Reduction Agency

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency is an agency within the United States Department of Defense and is the official Combat Support Agency for countering weapons of mass destruction . DTRA's main functions are threat reduction, threat control, combat support, and technology development...

issued a report that had been written in support of the United States Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from 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...

Attack. The report, entitled "Collateral Damage to Satellites from an EMP Attack," discusses in great detail the historical events that caused artificial radiation belts and their effects on many satellites that were then in orbit. The same report also projects the effects of one or more present-day high altitude nuclear explosions upon the formation of artificial radiation belts and the probable resulting effects on satellites that are currently in orbit.

See also