Seriously this the first time I've ever heard of this. I'm even asking around and everyone's going 
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At the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak, Alaska, in 2019, the Israelis successfully tested an anti-ballistic missile system that intercepts weapons in space. Now, in the Israel-Hamas War, it’s finally being used in battle, pushing military conflict above the atmosphere.
Kodiak Island is better known for its salmon-guzzling grizzly-bears than its rockets. But the forested Alaskan isle, separated from the mainland by the Shelikof Strait, has had a small commercial spaceport since 1998. Kodiak’s Pacific Spaceport Complex is intended for launching small satellites into polar orbit and got its start as the country’s first commercial spaceport. More famous facilities, like Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Vandenberg Space Force Base, are government-operated spaceports. Yet the majority of the 31 launches that have taken place at Pacific Spaceport Complex since its opening have, in fact, been for the military or government, including one foreign one: Israel. The shift towards supporting launches by the men in black has frustrated many of Kodiak’s residents, as I discovered when I visited the island last month.
Why is there a spaceport on Kodiak Island?
Kodiak might seem an unlikely spot for launching satellites into orbit. Spaceports are generally built closer to the equator to take advantage of the additional thrust provided by the Earth, which spins faster in the middle. Since the entire planet rotates once every 24 hours, objects on the equator are advancing 1670 km per hour. Those halfway to the North or South Pole are moving a mere 1170 km per hour, or 30 percent slower. Consequently, more rocket fuel is needed to launch from poleward locations to achieve the whopping speed of 40,270 kilometers per hour necessary to achieve escape velocity.
This advantage of equatorial launch sites, however, is negated when trying to launch into polar orbit. Polar orbits are used by satellites performing Earth observation or reconnaissance missions that image the entire planet. Each time a polar-orbiting satellite circles the Earth, it passes over the North or South Pole, providing full planetary coverage. Polar orbits are becoming increasingly popular as both governments and commercial firms seek to provide up-to-date satellite imagery of the entire planet.
Some northern countries and states like Alaska are hoping that satellite operators might turn to spaceports located in the world’s northern latitudes to reach polar orbits. Among them are not only the Pacific Spaceport Complex, but other other up-and-coming competitor spaceports like Andøya in northern Norway, Esrange in northern Sweden, and SaxaVord Spaceport in Shetland, in the northernmost bit of the United Kingdom.
Despite the seeming advantages of polar spaceports, many of the commercial actors that the Pacific Spaceport Complex has sought to attract have swallowed the extra fuel costs of launching from the south and transported their rockets and satellites to spaceports like southern California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base. These are much closer to major infrastructure and engineering facilities in places like Los Angeles and don’t require arranging complicated, expensive logistics to transport material to the Arctic or sub-Arctic by plane or barge. The cold waters around Kodiak Island make for some of the world’s richest fish and crab stocks, as made famous in the television show Deadliest Catch, but are notoriously harsh for boats. The turbulent weather around the Emerald Isle also means that rain, fog, and wind all challenge the reliability of the airport for satellite operators, which often have short windows in which to prepare and undertake missions.
The difficulties that the Pacific Spaceport Complex has encountered in attracting market share means that only nine of their 31 launches have been orbital. The rest have been suborbital launches, or those that fly into space but do not reach escape velocity and return to the atmosphere before fully orbiting Earth. While these might sound less than spectacular, military conflict is rapidly evolving in suborbital space, with one key innovator at the helm: Israel.
Anti-intercontinental ballistic missile testing on Kodiak
In July 2019, three suborbital launches went soaring into the blackness of space over the inky waters of the Gulf of Alaska surrounding Kodiak. These launches had one purpose: to test the Israel Defence Ministry’s Arrow 3 Interceptor Missile System. The state-of-the-art technology built by Israel Atmospheric Industries and troubled U.S. aerospace company Boeing employs “exoatmospheric hypersonic anti-ballistic missiles,” which can intercept and destroy incoming long-rang missiles above the atmosphere. The system provides a top layer of defense that complements Israel’s more famous “Iron Dome”, which shields the country from rockets and bombs fired closer to the ground.
Between 2008-2021, the U.S. government contributed $1.27 billion to Israel’s Arrow 3 program. Its support for Israel’s Arrow system has been consistent, with development first beginning in 1986. In 2004, the Naval Air Station Point Mugu Missile Test Center in southern California hosted tests of Arrow 2, which uses an explosive to destroy incoming medium- to long-range missiles. In contrast, Arrow 3 destroys incoming long-range missiles through interception alone in the exoatmosphere, or the region just above the Earth’s atmosphere. They must be designed to operate in a vacuum, requiring complicated engineering to deal with low pressure [1].
In June 2017, during a Congressional hearing, U.S. Vice Admiral James Syring explained the role that Kodiak would play in testing Arrow 3:
Admiral Syring: Yes, sir. We are close partners with Israel on development of their systems, system engineering in particular, and testing support also. And I have been intimately involved with them on David's Sling and Arrow, the more recent version of Arrow 3. And, frankly, that interceptor is now up into the exoatmosphere, and it has significant range constraints within the Mediterranean. And one of the better places to test is in Alaska, from Kodiak, and we plan to do that next year.
Mr. Coffman: Okay. So the Arrow 3 is designed to defeat the over-the-horizon capability of the Iranians. Am I correct in that?
Admiral Syring: Sir, it is designed to defeat the exoatmospheric ballistic missile threat from Iran.
In other words, given the crowded airspace around the Mediterranean, Israel was unable to test Arrow 3 to its full capacities. Moshe Patel, director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization, said in March 2019 during a panel discussion in Washington, D.C.: “Arrow 3 is too big for the state of Israel…It is supposed to be good against nuclear threats that are coming from Iran. (But) we have limitations in our arena to conduct flight tests because of safety.”
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