CHENNAI:
With Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday announcing about India acquiring anti-satellite capability by shooting down a live satellite in low earth orbit, the question is which satellite was shot down.
Modi was silent on the satellite that was hit. Officials of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) were said to be in a meeting and not available when IANS sought to clarify the issue.
However, an ISRO spokesperson told IANS: “The entire activity was that of the DRDO’s and we were not involved in it.” India has a good number of earth observation and communication satellites in orbit.
The space debris resulting because of India hitting a satellite in low earth orbit is expected to be not much. Though India’s anti-satellite capability was talked about earlier, it was only on Wednesday it was proved to the world.
India is also launching a good number of dedicated defence satellites in recent times. With China shooting down its own satellite some years ago, the question of safety of India’s satellites in orbit had come up for discussions.
