A Small Russian weather satellite recently ceased to exist. The Russians say that the US blasted it with an earth based laser, or communications jamming equipment. The US denies these claims. The US puts forth the alternate proposition that it was hit by space junk. The Russians say that if it was hit by space junk there would be more debris, apparently no debris was tracked. The Russians also say that the weather satellite was working fine until it the orbit placed in into a radar dead zone for about one hour. Once it was again visible on radar, the satelitte was no longer responding.

It seems to me that a laser would have left plenty of debris that would show up on radar. However, a small piece of junk could probably travel through a satelitte like a bullet and disable the thing without creating too much of a mess. Further more, why in the world would the US disable a weather satellite to test radar jamming equipment, is there some sudden dearth of useless US satellites on which to test such a weapon?

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