America intended to blow up the Moon

The US once planned to blow up the Moon with an atomic bomb in the 1950s.

At the height of the race in space, the United States had proposed a plan or use of nuclear bombs to destroy the Moon, with the goal of displaying its power during the Cold War.

Under this plan, a rocket carrying a small nuclear device will be launched from a secret place on Earth and then fly at a distance of 383.023km to the Moon before the nuclear device is detonated. The US decided to use nuclear bombs instead of hydrogen bombs because hydrogen bombs were too heavy for missiles.

American Fat Man atomic bomb. (Photo: Corbis)

Physicist Leonard Reiffel, who was a member of the Weapons Research Society and later deputy director of the US Space Agency (NASA), revealed the plan or used the Moon bomb to destroy the moon. in 1959, when the US Air Force deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The US believed that the power of the nuclear explosion on the Moon would enable them to increase their confidence and threaten the Soviet Union, after the Soviets successfully launched the Sputnik spacecraft. However, the secret project, nicknamed "Project A119" was never implemented.

US military officials at the time rejected the idea because they feared that people on Earth could face danger in case of a missile. Scientists are also concerned that the Moon will be contaminated by nuclear radiation.