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Modi Hails India's Arrival as Space Power After it Shoots Down Satellite in Test:
India shot down one of its own satellites in low-Earth orbit with a ground-to-space missile on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, hailing his country's first test of such weaponry as a breakthrough establishing it as a military space power.
India would only be the fourth country to have used such an anti-satellite weapon after the United States, Russia and China, said Modi, who heads into general elections next month.
"Our scientists shot down a live satellite 300 kilometers 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."
Elections are coming up, and more than one politician is trying to make their name as the Space General of the future.
[Updated 2019-03-28 to properly quote source article.--martyb]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday March 28 2019, @01:04AM (1 child)
Forget the Kessler syndrome. Most of the debris will decay, and the rest could be cleaned up by missions.
The real issue is: What do you do when your GPS/GLONASS/BeiDou/IRNSS satellite is destroyed? Destroy an enemy satellite, or fire the nukes?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @04:32PM
It depends, have those nukes been upgraded to use GPS/GLONASS/BeiDou/IRNSS?