nobody can stop you without a military strike (and the risk of Kessler syndrome).
Would it work to send a robot to rendezvous with it and turn it so the solar cells aren’t facing the sun? Or cut the cables collecting the electricity?
One can think up countermeasures. And countermeasures to those countermeasures.
There is a question of if soft-kill or even ASAT weapons in general (barring Kessler) can keep up with the scale of new satellites being placed in orbit however. Already we launch several thousand per year. I’d guess the economics favor an actor who can spam satellites into orbit.
Would it work to send a robot to rendezvous with it and turn it so the solar cells aren’t facing the sun? Or cut the cables collecting the electricity?
One can think up countermeasures. And countermeasures to those countermeasures.
You can do things like this, China’s Shijian-21 docked with a defunct Beidou navigation satellite and towed it into a graveyard orbit in 2022. I think this capability is still being expanded/developped.
There is a question of if soft-kill or even ASAT weapons in general (barring Kessler) can keep up with the scale of new satellites being placed in orbit however. Already we launch several thousand per year. I’d guess the economics favor an actor who can spam satellites into orbit.