
India’s destruction of satellite threatens ISS, says Nasa - zhte415
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/apr/02/a-terrible-thing-nasa-condemns-indias-destruction-of-satellite-and-resulting-space-junk
======
dominicr
They really need an international treaty to stop these valueless
demonstrations of power.

Sure it shows you've got capabilities for shooting down really low satelites,
but it also shows you don't have consideration for the effect this will have.
If we don't cooperate globally and stop so much space debris being created
some orbital ranges could become impractical to use and manned space flight
becomes even more dangerous.

~~~
pjc50
There is a treaty against the militarisation of space, but it doesn't cover
this. Ironically India was recently arguing for it to be strengthened.
[https://www.nti.org/gsn/article/india-urges-strengthening-
ou...](https://www.nti.org/gsn/article/india-urges-strengthening-outer-space-
treaty/)

~~~
glax
You have to look through the geopolitical aspect. Treaties, historically have
been favorable for those who ride the high horse, bystanders gut mud slung
upon them. In the 60's India was pressurized not to develop Nuclear bombs, but
it was secretly known pakistan was developing it with the help of china and
stolen tech. If India had signed the NPT back then, it would not have have
anykind of deterrence action against Pakistan where they had full scale war
and USA coming to pakistans's Aid when India was trying to liberate East
Pakistan where there was full scale genocide of ethnic Bangla people going,
that we now know as Bangladesh. They developed the bombs but with a no first
use policy.

Now in 2019 with 2 front war with both Pakistan and china, where both party
have actively militarized the border with them and playing the proxy war it
was sure coming. China vetoing 2 times action against J-E-M terrorist group
based in Pakistan that are active in insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir state of
India. They are also actively claiming the state of Arunachal Pradesh as the
territory like they did with Tibet

China has also amassed large number of military installation near the North-
Eastern border of India and have actively tried en roaching into Indian
territories, several kilometers sometimes into the past few year resulting in
border skirmishes sometimes.

Last time India declined the UNSC seat and gave it to china & they are still
regretting the the decision. They are hoping the next NPT for Space will have
India's seat already reserved.

If other nations are going to play game of dual diplomacy it's leaves no
option but to demonstrate show of force. India cannot afford to become Another
Ukraine, Tibet or Taiwan becomes some other nation can abuse it's power.

Edit:Will provide citation in 2 hours currently in Mobile.

------
shermozle
Alternative title: Country that has already done thing decries country that is
doing thing.

See also the non-proliferation treaty.

~~~
kranner
> Alternative title: Country that has already done thing decries country that
> is doing thing.

This is no argument. It is now recognised as an irresponsible thing to do by
anyone.

The US dropped nuclear bombs on populated areas during WW2. Should it not try
to stop countries that may want to drop such bombs in 2019?

~~~
roenxi
Obviously the US should try to stop other countries that want to drop bombs;
it makes sense from every perspective in a moral and realpolitik sense.

However, the issue we face in your counter is that the US dropped 2 bombs, the
world didn't end, and obviously they were happy enough with the results that
they've kept a rather large nuclear arsenal in prime condition, ready to be
used. I'm not even sure if the US apologised for dropping those nukes.

From a high-functioning-sociopath perspective, which is what large
agglomerations of humans do frequently degenerate to, why shouldn't a given
country not strive to emulate something that clearly worked? For the US to
decry such mimicry is meaningless at best, hypocritical at worst:

1) If they think an act is against some great universal principle they should
not have done it in the first place.

2) If individual politicians would almost certainly seek power by any means if
roles were reversed, that is just the sort of people who become politicians.

It is fine if they want to boss countries around to support their own
interests; that is sort of expected. To do more is to invite eye rolls.

~~~
kranner
Just because countries tend to act like sociopaths doesn’t make that sort of
behaviour acceptable.

And if we leave behind the bomb analogy, this was an action with global
consequences. Not only potentially harming the ISS but risking escalating an
arms race that could jeopardise all future satellites and space missions.

------
ThePhysicist
The movie “Gravity“ was based on such a scenario, although there it were the
Russians that shot down a satellite, resulting in the debris to hit a space
shuttle and destroy it.

Not happy to see reality catch on so fast with science fiction to be honest.

~~~
atomlib
The premise is entirely unrealistic since the difference in orbit parameters.
We aren't talking about some slight misconceptions; reality completely walks
out of the window in Gravity:

* Most satellites and all crewed spaceships orbit Earth from west to east. Why would they hit each other?

* There is no way to travel between the Hubble and space stations like the way it happened in the movie. Especially not with that EMU with 25 m/s delta-v. That's like taking a cup of kerosene, pouring it into a Boeing 747, and traveling 9000 km. Hubble and the ISS have completely different orbits with different inclination.

* Overall, writers of Gravity have no understanding of orbital mechanics whatsoever.

* ISS orbit height is something like 400 km, for Hubble it's about 550 km. Most communication satellites are orbiting the Earth thousands of kilometers above the sea level. A circular geosynchronous orbit is 35 786 km above Earth's equator.

As for the ISS, the majority of debris created by recent India's incident are
300 km above the sea level. ISS is about 100 km higher.

According to this
[https://www.spaceacademy.net.au/watch/debris/orblife.htm](https://www.spaceacademy.net.au/watch/debris/orblife.htm)
objects with 300 km altitude will enter atmosphere in a month.

~~~
kranner
> As for the ISS, the majority of debris created by recent India's incident
> are 300 km above the sea level. ISS is about 100 km higher.

Please read the article.

24 pieces are (so far) known to have gone higher than the ISS. These are
objects "10cm (six inches) or bigger". There are other pieces "which are
dangerously large but too small to track".

------
reacharavindh
At the risk of sounding like useless - "But, what about"....

As long as we are stating facts and blaming and shaming China and India on
their activities, can we please get a full picture on the REST of the
contributors to this debris of quoted total 10,000 pieces of space debris?

If China contributed nearly 3000, and India recently contributed 400, who did
contribute to the rest of approximately 6600?

Not advocating that all countries should shoot down waste satellite and turn
them into dangerous debris. Just wondering what standing does NASA have on
this issue...?

~~~
cesarb
According to a source for the Wikipedia article on the collision between
Kosmos-2251 and Iridium 33
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision)),
~1000 of these would be from Kosmos-2251 (Russia) and ~300 from Iridium 33
(USA). Looking at the graph on that source
([http://www.spacenewsmag.com/feature/10-breakups-account-
for-...](http://www.spacenewsmag.com/feature/10-breakups-account-for-13-of-
cataloged-debris/)) there are several more from other failed satellites from
the USA and Russia (which makes sense, given the amount of satellites these
two countries have launched).

------
dreamcompiler
A visualization of what happened is here [0]. The problem when you explode an
object in LE orbit is that you decelerate some bits of it -- which causes
those bits to fall lower and reenter the atmosphere -- but you accelerate
other bits, which causes them to move into a higher orbit.

[0] [https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-space-junk-india-
destro...](https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-space-junk-india-destroying-
missile-threaten-international-space-station-terrible-thing-2019-4)

------
paol
After the entirely justified public shaming of China when they did this I
though, hey at least this disaster will serve as an example and no one will be
so stupid as to do it again.

Then India proves they are so stupid as to do it again.

I can't imagine the decision process that leads to the go-ahead on something
like this. The only scenario that enters my head is some Dr. Stangelove-grade
military lunatics getting the hands on the launch keys.

------
x7u70y
Superpower by 2020.

~~~
pjc50
India arguably became a superpower when they acquired their first nuclear bomb
in 1974.

However, the recent Kashmir conflict has not made their conventional forces
look very good.

~~~
swarnie_
Nukes only really work when you flex against someone without them, see Russia
and the Ukraine or America and most the world.

The dick waving contest between India and Pakistan is probably the scariest
situation on earth right now.

~~~
simonh
It doesn't always work even then. Just look at the Argentine invasion of the
Falkland Islands. We could have crisped half the population of Argentina in
theory, but it really wasn't even a point of political discussion. The Taliban
was complicit in the murder of ~3,000 US citizens but again nukes were not on
the table.

Having said that, we can't automatically assume that would never provoke
Britain or the US to a nuclear response, wouldn't provoke a more extreme
reaction in another country in different circumstances. Britain and the US
were never existentially threatened.

~~~
hyeonwho4
To be fair, "just nuke afghanistan" was a phrase I heard several times in
2001. Maybe 10% of the US population would have welcomed use of nukes. More,
if it had been packaged as part of with-us-or-against-us rhetoric.

~~~
simonh
That doesn't mean it was on the table as a serious political option. I chose
my words carefully.

