After the Indian Anti-Satellite Test (ASAT) Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos is preparing to initiate international negotiations on banning full-scale tests of anti-satellite weapons, Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin said on Friday.
“Roscosmos plans to initiate international negotiations with the aim of banning full-scale anti-satellite weapon tests held by way of destroying spacecraft and littering low orbits,” Rogozin said at the Central Research Institute of Machine-Building (TsNIImash, Roscosmos’s leading research organization).
Rogozin said he was concerned over these tests as satellite fragments “may destroy the station.”
Earlier India successfully conducted the ASAT Test joining the distinguished list of the US, Russia and China. Indian PM Narendra Modi in a televised address to the nation stated that the country’s military had successfully tested its own anti-satellite weapon to hit a satellite in a low near-Earth orbit.
PM Modi in the televised address proudly stated that India has now entered the group of space superpowers to take a place next to the United States, Russia and China.
The weapon was developed by India’s Defense Research and Development Organization. The interceptor missile was launched from a test site on the Abdul Kalam Island in the Bay of Bengal off the east coast of the State of Odisha. India used its own satellite as a target.
Senior Assistant to the section chief at Russia’s Space Situation Reconnaissance Center Roman Fattakhov later said that India’s anti-satellite weapon test had caused the space apparatus’s destruction and produced more than 100 fragments that might endanger the International Space Station.
