On March 27, 2019, the official leadership of India announced that the country had successfully tested an anti-satellite missile. Thus, India is strengthening its position in the club of space superpowers. By successfully hitting a satellite, India has become the fourth country in the world after the United States, Russia and China to possess anti-satellite weapons and have previously successfully tested them.
Up to this point, the Indian space program has developed exclusively in a peaceful manner. The main achievements of Indian astronautics include the launch of an artificial Earth satellite in 1980 by its own forces. The first Indian cosmonaut got into space on the Soviet Soyuz-T11 spacecraft in 1984. Since 2001, India has been one of the few countries that independently launches its communications satellites, since 2007 India has independently launched launches of spacecraft returned to Earth, and the country is also represented on the international space launch market. In October 2008, India successfully launched its first own lunar probe, designated "Chandrayan-1", which has successfully spent 312 days in orbit on an artificial Earth satellite.
India's interests are currently affecting deep space. For example, on November 5, 2013, the Indian interplanetary automatic station "Mangalyan" was successfully launched. The device was intended for the exploration of Mars. The station successfully entered the orbit of the red planet on September 24, 2014 and began work. The very first attempt to send an automatic vehicle to Mars ended as successfully as possible for the Indian space program, which already testifies to the ambitions and capabilities of New Delhi in the field of space exploration and conquest. The interplanetary automatic station to Mars was launched by a four-stage Indian-made PSLV-XL rocket. Indian cosmonautics plans to launch manned flights in the near future. India expects to carry out the first manned space launch in 2021.
Indian PSLV rocket launch
In light of the fairly successful development of the space program, it is not surprising that the Indian military was able to get their hands on a rocket capable of shooting down satellites in earth orbit. China, which is also actively developing its own astronautics, carried out similar successful tests in January 2007. The Americans were the first to test anti-satellite weapons back in 1959. The development of anti-satellite weapons in the United States was carried out in response to the launch of the first Soviet satellite. The American military and ordinary people assumed that the Russians would be able to place atomic bombs on satellites, so they developed means to combat the new "threat". In the USSR, they were in no hurry to create their own anti-satellite weapons, since the real danger for the country began to manifest itself only after the Americans were able to put a sufficient number of their own spy satellites into Earth's orbit. The answer to this was the successful tests of an anti-satellite missile, which the Soviet Union conducted in the late 1960s.
It is worth noting that representatives of the leadership of the Defense Research and Development Organization of India spoke back in February 2010 that the country has modern technologies that allow confidently hitting satellites in Earth orbit. Then a statement was made that India has all the necessary parts for the successful destruction of enemy satellites located in both near-earth and polar orbits. Delhi took nine years to move from words to deeds. On March 27, 2019, the current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the successful test of anti-satellite weapons in an address to the nation.
The success of the Indian anti-satellite missile tests the next day was confirmed by the US military. Representatives of the 18th US Air Force Space Control Squadron announced that they recorded more than 250 debris in low Earth orbit, which formed after tests of Indian anti-satellite weapons. This US Air Force squadron specializes directly in the control of outer space. Later, Patrick Shanahan, who is currently the head of the Pentagon, said about the fears that are associated with the testing and use of anti-satellite weapons by various countries. Among other things, the head of the US defense department highlighted the problem with the formation of additional space debris after such tests, such debris can pose a threat to operating satellites. In turn, the Russian Foreign Ministry on March 28, 2019, commented on the Indian tests of anti-satellite weapons in the sense that they are the response of other countries to the implementation of US plans to launch weapons into space, as well as to build up the global missile defense system.
Launch of the Indian anti-satellite missile A-SAT, photo: Indian Ministry of Defense
At the same time, the Indian side says that it tried to conduct the tests with the highest possible level of precaution. The satellite was shot down by a rocket in a relatively low orbit of 300 kilometers, which should be the reason for the short lifespan of most of the debris formed. Approximately 95 percent of the debris formed, according to Indian experts, will burn up in the dense layers of our planet's atmosphere within the next year, or at most two years. At the same time, experts say that fragments and debris remaining in orbit will pose a certain threat to already launched spacecraft, since after the explosion they are in rather random orbits.
In turn, in 2007, the PRC shot down its own used meteorological satellite at a much higher altitude - about 865 kilometers. At one time, Nikolai Ivanov, who holds the post of the chief ballistics officer of the Russian MCC, lamented that it was extremely difficult to track the smallest fragments into which the affected satellite was flying. After the Chinese tests of an anti-satellite missile in 2007, the chief ballistician of the Russian Mission Control Center recalled that only objects with a diameter of more than 10 cm are tracked. But even the smallest particles have a truly enormous energy, posing a threat to many spacecraft. For clarity, he explained that any object not larger than a hen's egg, moving at a speed of 8-10 km / s, has exactly the same energy as a loaded KamAZ truck moving along the highway at a speed of 50 km / h …
About what exactly the Indian anti-satellite missile was today, practically nothing is known. The development does not go under any known name and is still designated by the standard abbreviation A-SAT (short for Anti-Satellite), which is used all over the world to designate missiles of this class. The Indian Prime Minister's comment on the successful tests was accompanied by a short presentation using 3D graphics. So far, these materials are the only source of information about the new rocket. According to the materials presented, we can say that India has successfully tested a three-stage anti-satellite missile that uses a kinetic striking element to destroy satellites (affects the target with a strike). Also, according to Narendra Modi, it is known that a satellite located in low earth orbit at an altitude of 300 kilometers was hit by a rocket. The Prime Minister on duty called the tested missile a high-tech and high-precision weapon, stating quite obvious things.
An approximate scheme of the destruction of the satellite, from the moment of the launch of the rocket to the destruction of the satellite, 3 minutes passed, the interception at an altitude of ~ 283.5 km and a range of ~ 450 km from the launch site
The video shown by the Indian side shows all the stages of the flight of an anti-satellite missile, which received a kinetic warhead. The video consistently demonstrates the flight: the moment of pointing to the satellite by ground-based radars; exit of the rocket at the expense of the first stages to the required trajectory of transatmospheric interception; launch of its own kinetic warhead radar; the process of maneuvering a warhead to destroy a satellite; the moment of the meeting of the kinetic warhead with the satellite and the subsequent explosion. It should be noted here that the technology of destruction of an orbiting satellite in itself is not a super-difficult task in its calculation part. In practice, almost 100 percent of all orbits of near-earth satellites are already known, this data is obtained in the course of observations. After that, the task of destroying satellites is a task from the field of algebra and geometry.
This is true for inert satellites that do not have modules on board to correct their own orbit. If the satellite uses orbital engines to change its orbit and maneuver, the task is seriously complicated. Such a satellite can always be saved by giving appropriate commands from the ground to correct the orbit after the launch of enemy anti-satellite missiles is detected. And here the main problem is that today there are very few satellites that could perform the evasive maneuver. Most of the modern military spacecraft launched into low-earth orbit can be shot down by already created and tested anti-satellite missiles. Taking this into account, the successful tests by India of such a missile demonstrate that the country is really ready to wage war in space at the current level of development of technology and technology. At the same time, we can already say that such tests and the expansion of the number of countries that have their own anti-satellite weapons, launch the eternal confrontation between "armor and projectile", but adjusted for near space.
