The US and Soviet Union's Plan to Detonate a Nuclear Bomb on the Moon

The US and the Soviet Union once planned to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon to demonstrate their superpower status during the Cold War.

The US Castle Romeo nuclear bomb test in 1954. Photo: US Department of Energy.

During the Cold War,To demonstrate their stature as superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union once planned to detonatenuclear weapons onMoonto demonstrate technological superioritymine, according to National Interest.

In 1958, the US Air Force asked the Armor Research Foundation (ARF), the predecessor of the Illinois Institute of Technology, to launch Project A119, which focused on studying the effects of a nuclear explosion on the surface of this celestial body.

"The US Air Force is very interested in the possibility of a sudden, large explosion on the Moon. The main goal of this explosion is to demonstrate the superiority of US power. The US Air Force wants a mushroom cloud so large that it can be seen from Earth," said the director of Project A119.Leonard Reiffelwritten in the journal Nature.

According toReiffel, nThese studies not only help American scientists grasp the effects of nuclear weapons in space but alsoalso served the secret military purposes of the government at that time.

"Certainly this project serves military purposes as well, since the information provided is related to the outer space environment and the possible use of nuclear weapons for space warfare,"Reiffel emphasized.

In 1959, to get a scholarship to Miller Academy,Carl Sagan,A recent graduate of the University of California, revealed some of his work for the ARF, including a report titled "Possible Effects of a Nuclear Explosion on the Moon on the Resolution of Certain Astronomical and Radiological Problems on the Moon Following a Nuclear Explosion."

The Pentagon did not comment on plans to attack the Moon with nuclear weapons during the Cold War, but many reports from that time were destroyed.

Russian nuclear-capable Tu-160 bomber. Photo: National Interest.

Meanwhile, after the success of the launch of the Sputnik satellite, two Russian scientists, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev and Mstislva Vsyevolodovich Keldysh, proposed to the Soviet leadership a series of projects to compete with the United States in the space field, including presenting all the options for landing on the Moon.

Among the projects with the E symbol related to the lunar landing plan, there was E-4, which was a plan to conduct a small nuclear explosion on the surface of the Moon.

"In 1958, there were plans to put an atomic bomb onMoonso that astronomers around the world could photograph and record the explosion. Thus, no one in the world doubted that the Soviet Union had the ability to land on the surface.Moon. But this idea was dismissed because physicists found that the light from the explosion was very short-lived on the surface.Moonand thus cannot be photographed or recorded",Famous Russian rocket engineer Boris Chertok revealed to Reuters about the E-4 project.

Later, the Soviet Union sent cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, and the United States succeeded with the Apollo Program, causing plans to detonate nuclear weapons on the Moon to be completely canceled.

According to VNE