Pakistan on India's ASAT: Mission Shakti threatens peaceful space activities
New Delhi : The political war has gone beyond the mighty Earth. After NASA slams India's mission shakti, Pakistan is taking full advantage of the situation. The neighbouring country is expressing deep concern over India’s ASAT test which was conducted successfully last month. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 27 had announced that India had demonstrated anti-satellite missile capability by shooting down a live satellite.
Pakistan said that ASAT is creating debris in space which has increased the risk of collision with the International Space Station. “This ASAT test should be a matter of grave concern for the international community not only in terms of generation of space debris but also because of its ramification for long term sustainability of peaceful space activities,” the office of Pakistan's Official Spokesperson said in a press release.
According to Pakistan's press release it would also be wrong to ignore the military dimension of the test and its implications on the global and regional peace, stability and security. The press release was flashed after NASA administrator Jim Brindenstine pointed out that NASA had identified 400 pieces of orbital debris from India’s anti-satellite test that posed a risk to the ISS which was launched way back in 1998 and has seen over 54 crewed missions.
Meanwhile, Tapan Misra, senior advisor to ISRO chairman has positively responded to the claims and said that Indian scientists will not do anything to shame India and the debris from the “Mission Shakti” experiment will burn out in the next six months.
Nevertheless, Pakistan has said that it remains a strong proponent of non-militarization of outer space.
“We will continue to work with like-minded countries to address gaps in the international legal regime governing the exploration and use of outer space with a view to ensuring that no one threatens peaceful activities and applications of space technologies for socio-economic development,” the press release added.
