“That is a terrible, terrible thing,” the NASA administrator said.
By Rick Noack Rick Noack Foreign affairs reporter focusing on Europe and international security Email Bio Follow April 2 at 6:33 AM One week after India became the fourth country in the world to target and shatter a satellite in low Earth orbit with a missile, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine condemned the unilateral move on Monday.
“We are not just capable to defend on land, water and air, but now also in space,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said last week. “India registered its name as a space power,” he said. The Indian test’s risks still fade in comparison to the 2007 equivalent by its archrival, China, which shattered a satellite at an altitude of more than 500 miles. The 2007 test is estimated to have created about 25 percent of today’s debris larger than 10 centimeters. At the time, Beijing was widely condemned for targeting one of its own satellites in a densely used orbit, where the likelihood of a catastrophic crash is highest.
Meanwhile, programs to clean up space have stalled. “There are no salvage laws in space. Even if we had the political will to [salvage junk], which I don’t think we do, we couldn’t bring down the big pieces because we don’t own them,” Joan Johnson-Freese, a Naval War College professor, told The Washington Post in 2014.
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