India shoots down its own satellite

India shot down one of its satellites in space with an antisatellite missile on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, hailing the country’s first test of such technology as a major breakthrough that establishes it as a space power.

India would be only the fourth country to have used such an anti-satellite weapon after the United States, Russia and China, Modi said in a television address to the nation.

Such capabilities have raised fears of the weaponisation of space and setting off a race among rivals.

China’s foreign ministry said it hoped all countries “can earnestly protect lasting peace and tranquillity in space”.

The US and Russia both declined to make any immediate comment.

No comment was available from old rival Pakistan.

Anti-satellite weapon technology allows for attacks on enemy satellites – blinding them or disrupting communications – as well as providing a technology base for intercepting ballistic missiles.

“Our scientists shot down a live satellite 300km away in space, in low-earth orbit,” Modi said in his address.

“India has made an unprecedented achievement.

“India registered its name as a space power.”

India has long had a space programme, making earth-imaging satellites and launch capabilities as a cheaper alternative to Western programmes.

It successfully sent a lowcost probe to Mars in 2014 and plans its first manned space mission by 2022.

The latest test, conducted from an island off India’s east coast, was aimed at protecting Indian assets in space against foreign attacks, the government said.

“The capability achieved through the anti-satellite missile test provides credible deterrence against threats to our growing space-based assets from long-range missiles, and proliferation in the types and numbers of missiles,” the foreign ministry said.

The test lasted three minutes and was done in the lower atmosphere to ensure there was no debris in space and that whatever was left would “decay and fall back onto the earth within weeks”.

Indian defence scientists had sought political approval for live tests but successive governments withheld permission, fearing global condemnation, an Indian defence official said.

Modi has taken a strong position on national security, launching air strikes in February on a suspected militant camp in Pakistan that led to retaliatory raids by Pakistan in a dramatic ratcheting-up of tension between the nucleararmed rivals.