On July 9, 1962, crowds gathered on the beaches of Honolulu, Hawaii, watching the United States detonate a nuclear bomb in space. Known as Starfish Prime, the explosion was part of a series of high-altitude nuclear tests known as “Operation Fishbowl.” There were five nuclear explosions during the tests, Starfish was the largest with an energy of about 1.4 megatons.
After the bomb was detonated some 400 kilometers above Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean, the electronics began to fail and auroras appeared in the sky.
According to eyewitnesses, who were also recorded in military reports, first a white glow appeared among the clouds, and then it began to expand into a green ball of radiation in the open sky. These lights did not disappear and remained stationary for a while.
Then the greenish light turned purple and began to disappear from the point of explosion. A bright red glow began to appear on the horizon, and the eastern part of the sky filled with a faint, burning red semi-circle, causing some tiny stars to disappear. This event lasted at least seven minutes.
In response to similar Soviet tests, this test was carried out partly to control the effect on the Earth’s magnetic field and partly to examine whether nuclear explosions in space could be used against the Soviets. With these tests, they found that, surprisingly at the time, some satellites were disrupted, including one that was launched a day later. In addition, devices such as street lighting systems, fuses and burglar alarms were damaged in the Hawaiian Islands, 1,400 kilometers away, while a telecommunications facility was damaged.
The effects of the test persisted for a much longer period of time, except for the effects seen as Aurora. This explosion created an artificial radiation belt and persisted for several years with higher levels of radiation than naturally occurring Van Allen belts.
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