Project A119

At the beginning of the Cold War, the Soviet Union won the space race by launching the Sputnik-1 orbiter on October 4, 1957 . This satellite was the first artificial satellite in low Earth orbit, so its unexpected successful launch in combination with the failure of the American Avangard program pushed the start of a new space race. Trying to take revenge, the United States introduced a number of new projects and research, which ultimately led to the launch of the Explorer-1 satellite and the creation of advanced defense research projects and institutes ( DARPA and NASA) ^[1] .

In the 1950s and 1960s, the USSR and the United States improved their nuclear weapons and conducted nuclear tests in different environments. Tests in space were also commonplace, right up to the conclusion of the 1963 treaty . It was in the vein of these tests in 1958 that both the USA and the USSR planned to carry out nuclear explosions on the moon. These projects were not destined to come true, but explosions in the upper atmosphere and in space were carried out quite often ^[2] .

In 1949, the Armor Research Foundation (ARF), based on the Illinois Institute of Technology, began to study the environmental impact of nuclear explosions. These studies continued until 1962 ^[3] . In May 1958, the ARF began a secret investigation of the possible consequences of a nuclear explosion on the moon. The main objective of the program, held under the auspices of the US Air Force, is the implementation of a nuclear explosion on the moon, which will be visible from Earth. The ARF believed that such an experiment would increase the patriotism of the American people ^[4] .

During the project, newspapers spread rumors that the USSR was planning to detonate a thermonuclear bomb on the moon. At the end of 1957, the American press also reported that the USSR planned to celebrate the anniversary of the October Revolution , coinciding with the lunar eclipse on November 7, 1957, with nuclear explosions on the moon ^[5] .

A similar idea was put forward by Edward Teller , the “father” of the American thermonuclear bomb, who in February 1957 proposed to detonate a nuclear explosive device both on the Moon and at a certain distance from its surface to analyze the consequences of the explosion ^[6] .

Research

Ten members of the team, led by Leonard Reifel, were assembled at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago to study the potential visibility of the explosion, its scientific significance and impact on the lunar surface. Among the members of the research group were astronomers Gerard Kuiper and his doctoral student Karl Sagan , who was responsible for the mathematical modeling of the expansion of the dust cloud in the space around the moon, which was an important factor in determining the visibility of an explosion from the Earth ^{[4] [6] [7]} .

To implement the project, scientists initially planned to use a thermonuclear bomb, but the US Air Force vetoed this idea because of the weight of such a device - at that time there were no launch vehicles capable of putting them into low Earth orbit and delivering enough cargo to the moon ^{[8 ]} . Then it was decided to use the W25 warhead - small, light and with a relatively low power (1.7 kilotons) ^[6] . For comparison: “Baby” , dumped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945 , had a capacity of 13-18 kilotons ^[9] . The launch of W25 was supposed to be carried out using a launch vehicle on the unlit side of the moon near the line of the terminator , where it was supposed to explode upon impact. The dust cloud formed by the explosion would rise to a considerable height and fall under the rays of the Sun, so that it could be seen from the Earth ^{[6] [7]} . According to Leonard Reifel, the Air Force’s progress in the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles made such a launch possible in 1959 ^[10] .

Cancel Project

The project was canceled by the Air Force in January 1959. Reasons have not been announced. It can be assumed that, firstly, the initiators of the project and US leaders were afraid of a negative public reaction and, secondly, Project A119 could pose a danger to the population in the event of an unsuccessful launch. Another argument against the project, cited by the project manager Leonard Reifel, was the possible consequences of radioactive contamination of large areas on the moon, which in the future could be used in the study and colonization of the moon ^{[10] [8]} .

Later studies showed that the corresponding Soviet project actually existed, but it was different from the scenario reported in the press. Appearing in January 1958 , it was part of various plans, code-named "E". Project E-1 was intended to reach the surface of the moon, while projects E-2 and E-3 were intended to send a probe to the back of the moon in order to take a series of photographs of its surface. The final stage of the project - E-4, was to deliver a nuclear strike on the moon. Like the American plan, a number of E projects were canceled even in the planning stage due to concerns about the safety and reliability of the launch vehicle ^{[11] [12]} . However, this question remains controversial, since the commander of a separate engineering and testing unit of the Baikonur cosmodrome, Gennady Ponomarev, denies that the E-4 project was a nuclear explosion project on the moon ^[13] .

Signed in 1963, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Testing Nuclear Weapons in the Atmosphere, Outer Space and Underwater and in 1967 the Space Treaty banned future research projects on the effect of nuclear explosions on the moon. However, earlier both the USA and the USSR carried out several high-altitude nuclear explosions, including operations Hardtack I, Argus, Dominic , as well as The K Project ^[6] .

In 1969, the palm of the lead in the space race temporarily passed to the United States after the success of the Apollo 11 mission ^[14] . In December of the same year, an Apollo employee, Harry Latham, proposed an explosion of a "small" nuclear device on the Moon in order to help scientific geological research ^[15] . This idea was rejected because the explosion would interfere with the measurement of the natural radiation background of the moon ^[16] .

The existence of the A119 project remained a secret until the mid -1990s , when the writer Kay Davidson discovered information about him while studying the documents necessary for writing a biography of Karl Sagan. Sagan’s participation in the project was tracked based on his application for an academic scholarship from the Miller Institute at UC Berkeley in 1959. In a statement, Sagan gave detailed information about a research project that, according to Davidson, was a violation of national security rules ^[17] . Sagan revealed the names of two secret documents on project A119: the 1958 document Possible Contribution of Lunar Nuclear Weapons Detonations to the Solution of Some Problems in Planetary Astronomy , and the 1959 document Radiological Contamination of the Moon by Nuclear Weapons Detonations' ^[3] , which was information leakage. These documents belonged to eight reports created by the project. All of them were destroyed in 1987 ^[4] .

Carl Sagan's biography, Carl Sagan: A Life, was published in 1999 . Soon after, a review was published in the journal Nature , which mentioned the disclosure of information leakage ^[18] . This led to the fact that Dr. Reifel wrote a letter to the journal, in which he confirmed that such actions of Sagan at that time were considered a violation of the confidentiality of the project. Reifel took the opportunity to reveal the details of the research, and his statements were later widely publicized in the media ^{[7] [19]} .

As a result of the publication of the data, a request was made regarding Project A119. And only forty years after the program was published the book “Study of research flights to the moon. Volume One. ”( Eng. A Study of Lunar Research Flights - Volume I ) ^[18] . A search for other documentation on the case showed that the remaining reports were destroyed in 1980 at the Illinois Institute of Technology ^[6] .

Dr. David Lowry, a “nuclear” historian from the UK, called the project “indecent,” adding that “if the project had been completed, we would never have had the romantic image of Neil Armstrong who made the“ giant leap for humanity ”” ^[4] .

• The modern computer simulation and animation technique allows you to simulate the possible course of a nuclear explosion on the moon.
• A variant of the scenario of a nuclear explosion on the moon was filmed in the movie " Grand Star " ( Grand Star ) in 2007-2008. ^[20]

• Project E-3
• Moon Rising (film, 2009)

• US Planned Big Nuclear Explosion for Humanity (guardian.co.uk)
• US Air Force Planned Moon Nuclear strike (space.com)
• Antony Barnett . US planned one big nuclear blast for mankind , The Observer (May 14, 2000). Date of treatment May 2, 2007.
• Air Force Had Plans to Nuke Moon , Space.com (May 14, 2000). Archived on August 16, 2000. Date of treatment May 2, 2007.
• US Considered A Bomb on Moon
• Satirical Essay on the topic (imao.us)
• Artículo: “US Considered A Bomb on Moon”
• Artículo "Satirical Essay on the topic"