NASA chief: Indian anti-satellite missile test is a "terrible thing"



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NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said Monday that only 60 debris were big enough to track. Of these, 24 went above the apogee of the ISS, the orbital point of the space station farthest from Earth.

"It's a terrible thing to create an event that sends debris during a climax that goes beyond the International Space Station," said Bridenstine during a public meeting at NASA. "This kind of activity is not compatible with the future of manned spaceflight."

"It is not acceptable for us to allow people to create orbital debris fields putting our people at risk," he added.

On March 27, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the country had achieved a "historic feat" by shooting down its own low-Earth orbit satellite with a ground-to-space missile.

Only three other countries – the United States, Russia and China – have anti-satellite missile capabilities.

The Indian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the test had been carried out in "the lower atmosphere to ensure that there was no space debris", and that "all generated debris would decompose and fall back to Earth in a few weeks".

But Bridenstine said the Indian test increased the risk of small debris reaching the ISS by 44 percent for the next 10 days.

"This is unacceptable and NASA must be very clear about its impact," he added.

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"We are charged with allowing more activities in the space than we have ever seen in the interest of the human condition, that it is about pharmaceutical or human organs printing in 3D in order to save lives here on Earth, or manufacturing capabilities in the space that: you can not do in a good gravity.

"All of these countries are at risk when this kind of events occurs – and when one country does, others feel compelled to do so too."

NASA tracks 23,000 orbital debris of 10 centimeters or more.

A third of the NASA cataloged debris was created in 2007, when China conducted an ASAT test, and in 2009 when US and Russian communication satellites collided.

However, Bridenstine said the test done in India had been low enough for "that in time, this debris will all disappear" with the safety of the ISS and all the astronauts on board.

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