The Biden Administration said the United States it will no longer conduct live tests of anti-satellite weaponry in an effort to gain co-signers to the policy, an effort to prevent additional damage to space assets by poorly-planned tests, the Associated Press reports.
The move comes after a November 2021 Russian weapon test that destroyed an inactive Soviet-era satellite. Other nations were given little warning of the test, which exploded the old satellite into more than 1,500 pieces of space shrapnel shooting in orbit around the planet. Such erratic debris paths will cause problems for other satellites, including vital equipment like GPS locators.
“Simply put, these tests are dangerous. And we will not conduct them,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in announcing the ban, adding, “A piece of space debris the size of a basketball, which travels at thousands of miles per hour, would destroy a satellite. Even a piece of debris as small as a grain of sand could cause serious damage.”