To add to this, given what we're learn about nuclear weapons in school/media, you'd think a small fission device would convert the entire mass of the satellite

To add to this, given what we're learn about nuclear weapons in school/media, you'd think a small fission device would convert the entire mass of the satellite into a ball of mixed plasma and vapour. A lot of the non-metallic mass of the satellite would probably vaporize, but any surviving bits would have a bunch of added kinetic energy. Especially for things that reflect both infrared and soft x-rays, with pretty high melting points and pretty high thermal masses, nuclear explosions do less damage than you'd think. There was a nuclear test where they put a steel sphere about the size of a bowling ball pretty close to a device similar to Gadget / Fat Man. Spoiler alert: it survived barely scratched.[0] You could probably design a satellite with thin enough pieces of metal and add carbon black / carbon fiber to any polymers too transparent to IR/soft x-rays. You could probably also use a thermonuclear device, but the particle steams caught in the earth's magnetic field would damage satellites, and there's also the EMP to worry about. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by1xpy8ob8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by1xpy8ob8E