MOSCOW, April 18. /TASS/. The debris left after India’s anti-satellite weapon test may at a certain point jeopardize the International Space Station, a senior assistant to the chief of a section at the Space Situation Reconnaissance Center, Roman Fattakhov, said on Thursday.
"India’s test of an anti-satellite weapon caused the space apparatus’s destruction and produced more than 100 fragments that may at a certain point endanger the ISS," Fattakhov told the conference Space Debris: Fundamental and Practical Aspects of Threat.
He said that in the current situation "access to outer space may be hindered in the long term."
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a televised address to the nation on March 27 said the country’s military had successfully tested its own anti-satellite weapon to hit a satellite in a low near-earth orbit. Modi said that after that test India 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.