India becomes fourth space superpower as it destroys satellite

INDIA has joined a club of space superpowers, its prime minister said yesterday, after successfully shooting down one of its own satellites.

Narendra Modi made the announcement that India was “now an established space power” in a press conference just a fortnight before the country’s general election.

The leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party added that the Indian-made missile had destroyed a 190-mile-distant satellite in less than three minutes.

He said the test made India the fourth country to develop and demonstrate the anti-satellite missile capability, after China, Russia and the US.

“India has always maintained that space should not be an area for warfare, and that remains unchanged in spite of this test,” Mr Modi declared in a televised address to the nation.

But the country, he stated, also wanted to defend itself and it was with this intent that it had pursued and achieved this missile capability.

Official sources told The Telegraph the missile was a “kinetic-kill vehicle” that did not carry any explosives or other devices.

They said its “kill” capability arose simply from the fact that it smashed into the target satellite at high speed.

In an official statement, India’s foreign ministry declared that the debris generated from the impact would “decay and fall back to earth within weeks” as the test was executed in the “lower atmosphere”.

The foreign office also stressed that the strike was not directed against any

‘India always maintained that space should not be an area for warfare, and that remains unchanged’

country but added that the capability gave India a “credible deterrence against threats to its space-based assets from enemy missiles”.

This was a thinly veiled reference to Pakistan and China, which similarly destroyed a weather satellite in 2007, creating the largest orbital debris in history.

The timing of Modi’s announcement has raised awkward political questions as the pre-election code of conduct in India prohibits parties from making announcements that could prove to be electorally advantageous.