Here’s what it looks like when you blow up nukes in space

Back in the summertime of 1962 , the US governance set off the only atomic number 1 bomb ever to blow up in space . Here are some fresh - released image that reveal the lightshow hoi polloi saw back on Earth .

This isfrom a report on NPR , using late - declassified images collect by Peter Kuran , who made the documentaryNukes In Space :

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accord to NPR ’s Robert Krulwich :

The plan was to send rockets hundreds of miles up , higher than the Earth ’s atmosphere , and then blow up nuclear weapons to see : a ) If a bomb ’s radiation sickness would make it hard to see what was up there ( like incoming Russian missiles ! ) ; b ) If an explosion would do any price to objects nearby ; c ) If the Van Allen belts would move a blast down the stria to an earthly target ( Moscow ! for example ) ; and – most peculiar – d ) if a man - made plosion might “ castrate ” the lifelike chassis of the [ Earth ’s magnetic ] belts .

That ’s right – the plan was to really see if we could deepen the satellite ’s charismatic sphere – a field , by the way , that protects us from deadly radioactive particles borne on the solar wind . Awesome . Erm , I think . ( Thanks , Gregory ! )

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