Three months ago, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise announcement that India successfully took down a redundant satellite with an anti-satellite (ASAT) missile from Earth. A new report states that the mission has left behind hazardous debris that pose a threat to other space missions.
Dubbed Mission Shakti, this was a stealth mission that wasn’t revealed until it was successfully executed. In a matter of just 3 minutes, a satellite in the low-Earth orbit of 300 km was destroyed, a feat previously achieved only by China, Russia and the U.S. But the mission was immediately met with criticism as it raised concerns over the space debris being projected around as a result of the explosion. In outer space, even small pieces of debris can cause heavy damage to other spacecrafts due to the speed at which they travel.
The Indian space agency ISRO went on to clarify that the 400 pieces of debris created will degrade within 45 days. In space, degradation implies the eventual entry of these pieces into the Earth’s atmosphere where they disintegrate without causing any harm to anything, on Earth or in space. However, almost three months later, there are still a few remains of MicroSat-R floating around.
Jonathan McDowell from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics shared an infographic which showed that 41 pieces were still traceable and in orbit around the Earth and could potentially endanger the International Space Station or other space exploration missions. He predicts that this rubble could take up to another year to decay entirely.
Jim Bridenstine, the head of NASA even went on to talk about Mission Shakti as “a terrible thing to create an event that sends debris at an apogee that goes above the International Space Station. That kind of activity is not compatible with the future of human spaceflight. It's unacceptable and NASA needs to be very clear about what its impact on us is.”
Outer space is estimated to be littered with over 30,000 pieces of space debris, some of which are dangerous. With multiple space missions planned by various countries, this issue will not be easy to deal with.