A Nuclear Test Conducted by North Korea in 2017 was Equal to ‘17 Hiroshimas’ Says ISRO Report
A team of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), comprising of three members namely K.M. Sreejith, Ritesh Agarwal and A.S. Rajawat has recently published their research paper in the Geophysical Journal International, which disclosed this alarming fact.
In the year 2017, North Korean conducted a nuclear test, which was so powerful that its effect moved the surface of Mount Mantap, the test site. The explosion was 17 times more powerful than the atom bomb that destroyed city of Hiroshima, a team of ISRO researchers has revealed recently.
A team of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), comprising of three members namely K.M. Sreejith, Ritesh Agarwal and A.S. Rajawat has recently published their research paper in the Geophysical Journal International, which disclosed this alarming fact.
In the course of time, North Korea developed nuclear weapons with 5 other underground nuclear tests, which culminated in a suspected thermonuclear explosion, a hydrogen bomb in September 2017.
The research clearly found that the nuclear explosion has resulted in the deformation of the surface deformation, at the same time the flanks of Mount Mantap experienced the displacements of up to 0.5 meter along the line of sight of the Japanese satellite ALOS-2.
The researchers, based on the satellite data also predicted that the explosion yield was about 245 to 271 kilotonnes as compared to the 15-kilotonne bomb used on Hiroshima in the year 1945. The research also found that the explosion test was conducted at the depth of 542 meter below the Mount Mantap.
Sreejith the lead author of the study said in a statement, “Satellite based radars are very powerful tools to gauge changes in Earth surface, and allow us to estimate the location and yield of underground nuclear tests”.
He also added, “In conventional seismology by contrast, the estimations are indirect and depend on the availability of seismic monitoring stations”.
As there was no seismic data available, the researchers have to depend on the satellite data to measure the variations of the test site surface. They used the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data of the Japanese satellite ALOS-2.
InSAR used multiple radar images to create several maps of deformation over the period of time and allowed direct study of the sub-surface processes from the space.
The study also revealed the importance of space-borne InSAR data for the measurement of the characteristics of underground nuclear tests, with better clarity in comparison to the conventional seismic methods. At present, nuclear explosions are rarely monitored from space because of the lack of data.
The positive outcome of the research is that currently the operating satellites such as Sentinel-1 and ALOS-2, along with the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, which is due for launch in the year 2022, could be used for this purpose in future.
