Putin's secret space weapon: Kremlin's mysterious Cosmos 2553 satellite 'is fitted with dummy warhead' in 'forerunner to nuke that could wipe out rival spacecraft and cause chaos on Earth'

A mysterious Russian satellite soaring at the outer limits of orbit around the Earth has triggered fears that Moscow is developing a space-based platform to launch missiles - perhaps even nuclear weapons - to destroy untold numbers of vital satellites. The 'Cosmos 2553' satellite was blasted through the atmosphere atop a Soyuz-2 rocket from Russia 's Plesetsk Cosmodrome in February 2022 Anti-satellite nukes could destroy entire communication networks, GPS relay stations, military targeting systems and defence sensors, making modern life on Earth all but impossible Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva, was among the first to identify Cosmos 2553 as a potential precursor to a space-based nuclear weapon. These include co-orbital anti-satellite weapons, direct-ascent ASAT missiles, and Starlink communication satellites Pictured: China launches the Shenzhou-13 spacecraft on October 16, 2021 The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle is pictured shortly after landing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, US, November 12, 2022 A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., Thursday, December 28, 2023. The rocket was carrying the U.S. military's X-37B secret space plane The debris field created by the Russian anti-satellite test against Cosmos 1408 in LEO causing alarm to the ISS crew, satellite operators, and spacefaring nations Though some space-based weapons technology is evidently already possessed by the likes of Russia, China and almost certainly the United States, advanced orbital weapons systems are still very much in their developmental stages. This system would see nuclear warheads deployed into low Earth orbit aboard some kind of manoeuvrable satellite or hypersonic vehicle which could sit in position hundreds of miles above ground.