The bulk of the debris from India’s March 27 anti-satellite test has decayed and whatever is left will disintegrate shortly, Defence Research and Development Organisation chief G Satheesh Reddy said on Friday. Shortly after the test, the United States flagged concerns about threat to space assets from the A-SAT debris.
“The majority of the pieces are gone and the few remaining will decay shortly,” Reddy said. He was responding to a question after delivering a talk on Technology for National Security at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. India conducted the test, codenamed Mission Shakti, in the lowest possible orbit to ensure there was no threat of debris to any global space asset.
The DRDO has maintained that the interceptor missile could have killed a satellite at a height of more than 1,000 km but India intentionally chose to demonstrate the capability in the low earth orbit at a range of less than 300 km to avoid the threat of collisions in space.