During the height of the Cold War, the U.S. military and atomic scientists decided to fire some nuclear rockets into space. The goal wasn’t to see how much damage the nuclear explosions could do ...

It looked like noon,” says Spriggs. Starfish Prime exploded at an altitude of 250 miles, at about the height where the International Space Station orbits today. For as long as 15 minutes after ...

the largest and most famous of which was Starfish Prime. On July 9, 1962, the U.S. detonated a 1.4-megaton thermonuclear bomb 250 miles above Earth's surface, which is the same altitude at which ...

Dubbed Starfish Prime, the test involved the launch of a W49 thermonuclear warhead developed at Los Alamos from Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The warhead detonated approximately 250 miles above ...

Starfish Prime launched in July 1962, when the U.S. sent up a 1.4-megaton thermonuclear warhead on a Thor missile and detonated it about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth. The missile was ...

I’ve since learned that the explosion that I witnessed was called Starfish Prime and was the largest high-altitude thermonuclear warhead test conducted by the United States. It took place at the ...

Starfish Prime launched in July 1962, when the U.S. sent up a 1.4-megaton thermonuclear warhead on a Thor missile and detonated it about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth. The missile was ...