Acting US Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan warned any nations contemplating anti-satellite weapons tests such as the one India carried out on Wednesday that they risk making a “mess” in space because of debris fields they can leave behind.
Speaking to reporters in Florida during a visit to the US military’s Southern Command, Shanahan said the US was still studying the outcome of a missile that India said it launched at one of its own satellites.
“My message would be: We all live in space, let’s not make it a mess,” Shanahan said. “Space should be a place where we can conduct business. Space is a place where people should have the freedom to operate.”
Photo: Reuters / Indian Press Information Bureau
Experts say that anti-satellite weapons that shatter their targets pose a hazard by creating a cloud of fragments that can collide with other objects, potentially setting off a chain reaction of projectiles through earth’s orbit.
The Indian Ministry of External Affairs played down any risk of debris from its missile test, saying that the impact occurred in low-earth orbit and that the remnants would “decay and fall back on to the earth within weeks.”
The US military’s Strategic Command was tracking more than 250 pieces of debris from the missile test and would issue “close-approach notifications as required until the debris enters the earth’s atmosphere,” Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Dave Eastburn said.
New Delhi and Washington, which generally have close relations, have been in talks regarding the event, and India publicly issued an aircraft safety advisory before the launch, Eastburn said.
The International Space Station was not at risk at this point, US Air Force Space Command Vice Commander Lieutenant General David Thompson added.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in testimony before the US House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations that the consequences of anti-satellite weapons tests could be long-lasting.
“If we wreck space, we’re not getting it back,” he said, without mentioning India by name.
India would only be the fourth nation to have used such an anti-satellite weapon after the US, Russia and China, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said.
The US ran the first anti-satellite test in 1959, when satellites themselves were new.
Shanahan said that given the increasing global reliance on space, it is important to create rules of the road.
“I think not having rules of engagement is worrisome, so how people test and develop technologies is important,” he said. “I would expect anyone who tests does not put at risk anyone else’s assets.”
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