India would only be the fourth country to have used such an anti-satellite weapon after the United States, Russia and China, said Modi
“Our scientists shot down a live satellite 300 kilometres away in space, in low-earth orbit,” Modi said in a television broadcast.“India has made an unprecedented achievement today,” he added, speaking in Hindi. “India registered its name as a space power.”
India tested an anti-satellite weapon on Wednesday, saying the indigenously produced interceptor was used to destroy an object in orbit. Michelle Hennessey reports.After the news, China’s foreign ministry said it hoped all countries “can earnestly protect lasting peace and tranquillity in space.” The United States and Russia both declined to make any immediate comment.
India has had a space program for years, making earth imaging satellites and launch capabilities as a cheaper alternative to Western programs.It successfully sent a low-cost probe to Mars in 2014 and plans its first manned space mission by 2022. The three-minute test in the lower atmosphere ensured there was no debris in space and the remnants would “decay and fall back on to the earth within weeks,” the ministry added.
China’s test spurred India to develop its anti-satellite capability, said Ajay Lele, a senior fellow of the government-funded Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi. Bold Orion, a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile repurposed to attack satellites, was launched from a bomber and passed close enough to the Explorer 6 satellite to destroy it if the nuclear warhead had been live.In the 1960s and early 1970s, the Soviet Union tested a weapon that would be launched into orbit, approach enemy satellites and destroy them with an explosive charge, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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